In an exclusive interview with New York Journal-American correspondent Alfred Robbins, Pat Newcomb said, “I had arrived at Marilyn’s house on Friday. I was fighting a bad case of bronchitis and had decided to enter a hospital for a complete rest, but Marilyn had called me and said, ‘Why don’t you come out here?…You can sun in the back and have all the rest you want, and you won’t have to go to the hospital.’ It was typical of Marilyn,” she went on, “this concern for friends. So I accepted her invitation. I found her in wonderful spirits. Some furnishings had just arrived from Mexico. She was in a very good mood—a very happy mood. Friday night we had dinner at a quiet restaurant near her home. Saturday she was getting things done inside the house. She loved it. This was the first home she ever owned herself. She was as excited about it as a little girl with a new toy.”
Newcomb said that when she left on Saturday, nothing indicated the impending tragedy: “When I last saw her, nothing about her mood or manner had changed.” She recalled that Marilyn had waved at her with a smile from the doorway and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow. Toodle-oo!” Pat Newcomb left Marilyn’s at approximately 5:45 P.M.
Five hours later Marilyn Monroe was dead.
The narrative of events was picked up by Murray, who stated that she stayed at her own apartment in Santa Monica on Friday night and returned to Marilyn’s Saturday morning. When she arrived, Norman Jefferies was already at work retiling the kitchen floor.
“I arrived there about eight-thirty Saturday morning,” said Murray. “Marilyn was up and dressed in a terry-cloth robe. Pat was asleep in the guest bedroom [the telephone room]. Marilyn and I had some juice; we were sitting in the breakfast nook. We talked for about an hour or so, discussing household things, then Marilyn went back to her bedroom.”
Newcomb had slept late, and according to Murray, Newcomb and Marilyn had a disagreement after Newcomb emerged from the telephone room. When asked about the disagreement, Newcomb stated that “the small argument that day was because I had been able to sleep all night and Marilyn hadn’t. While I had my door closed and was sleeping, Marilyn had been up wandering around the house. And she just couldn’t bear not being able to sleep. Then for her to see someone come out all refreshed, who had been sleeping the night before, you know, that made her furious.”
According to Murray, Marilyn didn’t eat lunch or dinner that day and spent the afternoon in her bedroom. When Newcomb began walking out to her car at about 1 P.M., Murray stated, “I called to her asking if she wanted something to eat. She said she did, and I fixed her one of my omelets.” After lunch Newcomb decided to stay on. Sometime in the afternoon Murray went shopping for about an hour, but she returned before Greenson arrived at about 5 or 5:30 P.M. It was unusual for Greenson to come to Marilyn’s. Marilyn almost always met with her psychiatrist at his home, which was only minutes away. When asked if Marilyn had requested that Greenson visit her, Murray replied, “No, I called him late that morning when Marilyn had said something about oxygen. She asked, ‘Mrs. Murray, do we have any oxygen around?’ I really didn’t understand, but it was something that I thought was questionable. It wasn’t my habit to call Dr. Greenson about every little thing, but I did call him and asked, ‘What’s this about oxygen?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m not quite sure, but I’ll be over later this afternoon.’”
Murray stated that she and Newcomb were talking in the living room when Greenson arrived. After briefly visiting Marilyn in her bedroom, Greenson walked to the living room and told Pat Newcomb she should leave. “When the doctor came, he spoke to Marilyn,” Murray said, “and then he asked Pat if she was leaving. She said, ‘Yes, I am.’ It was part of his plan, evidently, that Pat not stay because Marilyn and she had some kind of disagreement.”
According to Murray, Newcomb left between 5:30 and 6 P.M., and the doctor then went back into Marilyn’s bedroom. Approximately an hour later he emerged from the bedroom and asked Murray if she would spend the night.
“I said yes,” Murray recalled, “There wasn’t any feeling of urgency in his request. There wasn’t anything that gave me any idea that it was important that I stay.” Greenson then left at approximately 7 P.M.
Four hours later Marilyn Monroe was dead.
Not long after Greenson left, one of the phones rang in the telephone room. “I answered the phone and summoned Marilyn, who sat on the floor and talked to Joe DiMaggio, Jr.” Murray recalled, “She was in a very gay mood while she spoke with him. He had given her some good news—he had broken off with a girlfriend of whom Marilyn did not approve. She was very pleased about that. I didn’t hear what she was saying, but I heard her laughing. After the call, she phoned Dr. Greenson to tell him about it. Then she walked toward her room. I was in the living room facing her bedroom. She turned and said, ‘We won’t go for that ride after all, Mrs. Murray.’ I didn’t know what she meant, but the doctor told me later that he had suggested that if she felt restless she should go for a ride. I would take her because I was also her chauffeur.”
Murray recalled that Marilyn then took one of the phones into her bedroom and closed the door at approximately 8 P.M. According to Murray, it was the last time she was to see Marilyn alive.
Three hours later Marilyn Monroe was dead.
Though Peter Lawford’s story varied in minor details over the years, he held steadfast to the essential elements until his own death in 1984. Lawford said he was having a dinner party at his beach house Saturday night with television producer Joe Naar; Naar’s wife, Dolores; and Hollywood agent George “Bullets” Durgom. Lawford said he first telephoned Marilyn at approximately 5 P.M. Saturday, urging her to join them. He recalled that she “sounded despondent over her dismissal from the film Something’s Got to Give and some other personal matters.” She told him she wasn’t sure she’d be there and would think about it.
When Marilyn hadn’t shown up by seven-thirty, and Lawford called again, he said she sounded depressed and “her manner of speech was slurred.” She said she was tired and would not be coming. Her voice became less and less audible, and Lawford began to yell in order to revive her, describing his shouts as “verbal slaps in the face.” Then Marilyn stated, “Say good-bye to the president and say good-bye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy.”
According to Lawford, the telephone then became silent, as if Marilyn had put the receiver down or perhaps dropped it. He called back, but got a busy signal. Deeply concerned, Lawford considered rushing over to Marilyn’s, which was only ten minutes away; however, he claimed, he spoke to his manager, Milt Ebbins, who warned, “For God’s sake, Peter, you’re the president’s brother-in-law. You can’t go over there. Your wife’s out of town. The press will have a field day. Let me get in touch with Mickey Rudin. It’s better to let someone in authority handle this!”
Marilyn’s attorney, Milton “Mickey” Rudin, resolutely avoided the press, but he summarized his knowledge of what occurred in an interview conducted by Lieutenant Grover Armstrong on August 6:
Mr. Rudin stated that on the evening of 8/4/62 his exchange received a call at 8:25 P.M. and that this call was relayed to him at 8:30 P.M. The call was for him to call Milton Ebbins. At about 8:45 P.M. he called Mr. Ebbins who told him that he had received a call from Peter Lawford stating that Mr. Lawford had called Marilyn Monroe at her home and that while Mr. Lawford was talking to her, her voice seemed to “fade out” and when he attempted to call her back, the line was busy. Mr. Ebbins requested that Mr. Rudin call Miss Monroe and determine if everything was all right, or attempt to reach her doctor. At about 9 P.M. Mr. Rudin called Miss Monroe and the phone was answered by Mrs. Murray. He inquired of her as to the physical well-being of Miss Monroe and was assured by Mrs. Murray that Miss Monroe was all right. Believing that Miss Monroe was suffering from one of her despondent moments, Mr. Rudin dismissed the possibility of anything further being wrong.
Two hours later Marilyn Monroe was dead.
The narrative of the events in Marilyn Monroe’s last hours by the key w
itnesses painted a picture of a rather normal day in which she was in “a very good mood—a very happy mood,” save for the “small argument” with Pat Newcomb and the sudden despondency during Lawford’s call shortly after 7:30 P.M. However, the narrative was fraught with contradictions and implausible cause-and-effect relations.
If Marilyn had invited Newcomb over “to sun in the back and have all the rest you want,” instead of going to the hospital, it seems unlikely that Marilyn would be “furious” about her sleeping late. Both Newcomb and Murray, and at a later date Greenson, confirmed that an argument took place. However, the subject of the argument remains questionable.
Another question arises from Dr. Greenson’s visit. Marilyn’s inquiry, “Mrs. Murray, do we have any oxygen around?” was allegedly the reason Murray called Greenson. Yet Murray stated that Marilyn was “in very good spirits” that morning; nevertheless, she found the question about oxygen alarming enough to call the psychiatrist. Murray may not have known that oxygen was a well-known Hollywood cure for a hangover, but certainly Dr. Greenson knew this. Yet a call was made that did indeed prompt Greenson’s unusual visit. It is the reason given by Murray for the call that remains implausible.
According to Murray, after Marilyn and Newcomb had their disagreement, Marilyn spent most of the afternoon in her bedroom. Murray was specific in stating that Marilyn was in her room when Newcomb left and never said good-bye. That Newcomb stayed on until Greenson arrived and told her to leave seems as inexplicable as Newcomb’s recollection of her last view of Marilyn alive—smiling as she waved her last good-bye and saying, “I’ll see you tomorrow. Toodle-oo!”
In Peter Lawford’s description of his last call shortly after 7:30 P.M., he describes Marilyn as deeply despondent, slurring her words, and uttering the memorable farewell, “Say good-bye to the president…” However, Murray stated that at approximately 7:30 P.M., she called Marilyn to the phone to speak to Joe DiMaggio, Jr. DiMaggio confirmed the time in his interview with the police and indicated that Marilyn sounded quite normal and was in good spirits when they spoke. And in Murray’s statement regarding DiMaggio’s call, she said, “From the tone of Miss Monroe’s voice I believed her to be in very good spirits.” Murray described Marilyn as being “in a very gay mood while she spoke with him…. I heard her laughing.”
When the phone went dead during Marilyn’s conversation with Lawford, he said that he thought she may have hung up. Lawford maintained that he redialed several times, but the line was busy each time. A telephone operator checked and told him the phone was off the hook. However, Marilyn had two telephone lines, and certainly Lawford had both numbers. If her private line was busy, and he was so alarmed that he tried it several times and had the operator intervene, logically he would have also tried the house phone. Was that busy as well?
Lawford said that he hadn’t rushed over to Marilyn’s house because Milt Ebbins had stated, “For God’s sake, Peter, you’re the president’s brother-in-law. You can’t go over there!” However, Ebbins’s statement has a rationale only given the retrospective knowledge of her death.
Responding to Lawford’s concerns, attorney “Mickey” Rudin claimed that he called Murray to see if everything was all right. The “highly intuitive” Mrs. Murray assured him that Marilyn was fine. It wasn’t until seven hours later that Murray recovered her Piscean qualities and “seemed to sense that nightmare awaited, not in sleep, but beyond her bedroom door where the telephone cord running under Marilyn’s doorway indicated ‘something was terribly wrong.’”
It was then that she called Dr. Greenson for the second time that day. However, before changing the motivation for calling Dr. Greenson from the “light under the door” to the “phone cord under the door,” Murray had already told the press that the last time she’d seen Marilyn alive, “she had turned in the doorway and said, ‘We won’t be going for that drive after all, Mrs. Murray’ and went into her bedroom, taking the telephone with her.”
There were many implausibilities in the narrative of events by the key witnesses as to what occured in the last twenty-four hours of Marilyn Monroe’s life. Evidence would emerge indicating the depth of the deceptions. Investigative journalists would discover that the alarm concerning Marilyn’s death went out as early as 10:45 P.M. Saturday, and that an ambulance arrived at the house while Marilyn was still alive. Years later Murray would once again change her story and refute the “locked bedroom” scenario.
Clearly, in 1962 the key witnesses conspired to conceal information. The haunting question is why six diverse people—an actor, a housekeeper, a psychiatrist, a press agent, an attorney, and a physician—collaborated to conceal the truth regarding the circumstances of Marilyn Monroe’s death. What extenuating circumstances could have been so overwhelming that this disparate group conspired in a deception that has endured for over three decades?
Were they the extenuating circumstances of a suicide—or a murder?
4
Case #81128
Did Marilyn Monroe commit suicide, or were the drugs that killed her injected into her body by someone else?
—Thomas Noguchi, M.D.
While many businesses remained closed on Sundays, it was usually the busiest day of the week at the Los Angeles County morgue, because so many people seemed to die under questionable circumstances on Saturday night. In 1962, the county coroner’s office and morgue were in the basement of the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles. The dank, rat-infested facility suffered from limited funding and had a history of mismanagement and corruption. Investigations have revealed thievery, necrophilia, and the acceptance of bribes in the determination of the cause of death. Coroner Theodore Curphey’s underpaid and overworked staff consisted of only three full-time medical examiners, four laboratory technicians, and several coroner’s aides.
Dr. Thomas Noguchi, a newly appointed deputy medical examiner, arrived for his duties at six-thirty Sunday morning and “discovered something strange.” Curphey had left a telephone message: “Dr. Curphey wants Dr. Noguchi to do the autopsy on Marilyn Monroe.” Noguchi hadn’t heard that Monroe had died and at first didn’t realize that the note referred to the movie star. When he learned that it was, indeed, the Marilyn Monroe, Noguchi was surprised that he had been the examiner selected. “A more senior medical examiner normally would have performed the autopsy,” Noguchi stated, “and yet Dr. Curphey had made a unique call early on a Sunday morning assigning me to the job.”
When he didn’t find Monroe’s name in the necrology of bodies that had arrived at the morgue Saturday night and Sunday morning, he questioned coroner’s aide Lionel Grandison, who was responsible for ensuring that anyone who died under questionable circumstances, or without a physician’s direct attendance, be directed to the L.A. County Coroner’s office. Grandison soon discovered the first of many irregularities that led him to conclude that there had been an attempt to cover up the circumstances of Monroe’s death.
“When people die of natural causes in hospitals, the body is generally held there while arrangements are made for transportation to a mortuary,” Grandison recalled, “but when the death involved a suspected suicide or murder, or accident, or the causes were simply unknown, the law said the body had to be shipped to the downtown county morgue in the Los Angeles coroner’s office for evaluation.”
Grandison initiated a search and found the body at the Westwood Village Mortuary. “For that to happen,” Grandison related, “someone had to have called the mortuary and specifically asked them to come and pick up the body.” He was further surprised to find that the mortuary was preparing the body for embalming and was reluctant to release the corpse to the coroner. “They began to squawk. They didn’t want to let us have the body. But ultimately there was nothing they could do because they were under my orders and the jurisdiction of the county.” This was an unprecedented situation, and in his subsequent investigation Grandison questioned the Westwood Village Mortuary staff, but he never discovered who had received the call rel
easing the body from the death scene and directing it to their mortuary.
Shortly after 9 A.M., Grandison had the body removed from the mortuary and driven downtown, where it was placed in crypt #33 of the county morgue in the Los Angeles Hall of Justice. Marilyn Monroe became Coroner’s Case #81128. At 10:15 A.M., Eddy Day, a coroner’s assistant, wheeled the corpse to stainless steel table #1 to prepare it for autopsy. The table was equipped with a water hose and drainage system, and a scale for weighing human organs.
Marilyn Monroe would be the first of a number of stars to be included in Dr. Thomas Noguchi’s cadaverous cast of players. Others would include Sharon Tate, Janis Joplin, William Holden, Natalie Wood, and John Belushi. In 1968 he performed the autopsy on Robert Kennedy. Noguchi went on to publish a book concerning his affinity for the famous and gained the unfortunate title “Coroner to the Stars.” After the publication of his book in 1984, he was demoted by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors and put on probation for allegedly mismanaging his office and sensationalizing his position as medical examiner.
Shortly before the autopsy began, Noguchi was joined by John Miner, a deputy district attorney specializing in medical and psychiatric law. Miner was an associate clinical professor at the University of Southern California Medical School and, along with Dr. Ralph Greenson, a lecturer at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute.
Also attending the autopsy was the Los Angeles County coroner, Dr. Theodore Curphey. Though the coroner’s office has never revealed Curphey’s presence at the autopsy, Grandison recently stated, “I do recall the day of that autopsy. And I do know for a fact that Dr. Curphey was there at the autopsy…. I know that he personally supervised everything that happened.” Grandison’s revelation perhaps explains why a newly appointed deputy medical examiner had been assigned to Case #81128. “For Coroner Curphey to attend an autopsy was unprecedented,” according to Grandison. “He supervised the entire procedure and orchestrated the final report. It would have been difficult for Curphey to do that with the chief medical examiner, who normally would have received the assignment.”
The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe Page 3
