The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

by Donald H. Wolfe

  For years Sam Cordova said nothing about his dismissal. In 1995 he disclosed the reason for his silence. He owned a laboratory in Sylmar, California, that was dependent on government contracts, and he had been advised not to speak out or he would put his business at risk. Now retired, Cordova confirmed that his dismissal was a direct result of his determination to have a grand jury investigation of the Marilyn Monroe case.

  “The grand jury had discovered a great deal of information that left no doubt there had been a cover-up,” Cordova stated. “We had in our possession copies of internal memoranda of the coroner’s office calling for the destruction of evidence.”

  According to Cordova there had been political pressure to scuttle the investigation, but as a jurist representing the people of Los Angeles he felt he had the duty and the right to proceed. “Three days before my press conference my desk had been broken into, and somebody took my Monroe file,” Cordova stated. “I still feel very strongly that the grand jury investigation was warranted.”

  The year 1992 was the thirtieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death. Forests of trees were pulverized to pulp by the publishing industry in an orgy of Marilyn books. Glossy book jackets proclaimed to reveal The Truth at Last! The Untold Secrets! The Shocking Lies—The Explosive Truth! Notable among the many publications were Susan Strasberg’s Marilyn and Me; Robert Slatzer’s second Monroe book, The Marilyn Files; and the Peter Brown-Patte Barham bestseller Marilyn: The Last Take. But perhaps the most significant revelation appeared in Daryl Gates’s book Chief: My Life in the LAPD. In a chapter on Monroe, Gates wrote, “The truth is, we knew Robert Kennedy was in town on August 4. We always knew when he was here. He was the attorney general, so we were interested in him, the same way we were when other important figures came to Los Angeles…. So while we knew Robert Kennedy was in town that day, we paid no attention to where he went or what he did; whether he saw Monroe or not. Frankly, I never bought into the theory that she killed herself because he dumped her.”

  Gates’s statement confirmed once and for all the whereabouts of Bobby Kennedy on August 4, 1962.

  As the publishing year celebrating Marilyn Monroe’s enduring magic and mystery drew to a close, the strange death of Marilyn Monroe remained an enigma. There had been many revelations, and it became abundantly clear that there was an orchestrated cover-up of the events surrounding Monroe’s death, but there was such a deluge of theories, allegations, denials, lies, and disinformation that the general public began to despair of ever knowing the truth. On three separate occasions, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich had been successful in obtaining a majority vote of the Board of Supervisors in recommending a grand jury investigation. Each attempt was subverted by those who didn’t want the truth to be known.

  Officials in the corridors of power, such as Chief William Parker, Captain James Hamilton, Coroner Theodore Curphey, Chief Daryl Gates, John Van de Kamp, and Ira Reiner, had hoped that the public would grow weary in time—that the clay of mendacity would harden in the aridity of the public’s despair. Knowing that time was running out, Robert Slatzer once again prevailed on Mike Antonovich, and on September 8, 1992, for the fourth time, Antonovich presented a motion before the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors calling for an inquiry into the death of Marilyn Monroe.

  After an eloquent presentation of the facts to the board by Robert Slatzer, Jack Clemmons, medical experts, and ordinary citizens, a representative of the district attorney’s office stepped forward to speak in opposition to the motion. Contrary to his statements in 1986, Assistant District Attorney Ronald Carroll, who had conducted the 1982 threshold investigation, vehemently opposed the motion, stating that the district attorney’s office had chased many theories and came up with nothing. “You could have someone from outer space say she was murdered,” Carroll stated, “But you have a body that shows no signs of murder.”

  After Ronald Carroll completed his statement to the board and returned to his chair, the matter was put to a vote. An icy silence pervaded the chamber. This time the motion failed to even obtain a second.

  It seemed that the passage of time and the deceptions of officialdom had been successful. Marilyn Monroe’s death would forever remain a mysterious enigma. Probable suicide would be the official verdict consigned to history….

  …But in the fall of 1992 the distinguished publishing firm of HarperCollins announced its forthcoming publication Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, by eminent biographer Donald Spoto. Revealing that Spoto had been granted access to previously sealed documents, the book was heralded as “The definitive account of her life and death! The Truth! Finally!”

  14

  Explosive Revelations

  There’s a new breed of journalists—and those who call themselves “biographers”—who, in their dash for a swift buck, simply make things up.

  —Donald Spoto, 1993

  Due to its “explosive revelations,” advance copies of Marilyn Monroe: The Biography were withheld from reviewers. A prepublishing promo in the tabloid Star promised, “For the first time, the truth about her death is revealed—more bizarre and horrifying than anything a Hollywood screenwriter could devise!”

  Arriving in the bookstores in March 1993, Spoto’s biography denied that there had been a relationship between Bobby Kennedy and Monroe and absolved the Kennedys of any connection with her death. In his acknowledgments, Spoto stated that “Patricia Newcomb offered me unprecedented confidence and detailed many of the fine points of Marilyn’s last two years…. Her signal contribution to this book are everywhere evident.”

  In addition to calling previous Monroe biographers scurrilous journalists who wrote shameful books with “a disregard for the reputations of decent people and a profound indifference to the truth,” Spoto accused Dr. Ralph Greenson and Eunice Murray of murdering Monroe by administering a fatal barbiturate-laced enema. The reader was informed that Greenson and Murray’s motive was that they had been fired.

  Acknowledging that there was a cover-up of Monroe’s death, Spoto created a conundrum: the book failed to reveal why the FBI, the LAPD, the district attorney, and the coroner had gone to such lengths for over three decades to protect the reputations of a psychiatrist and a housekeeper.

  As Spoto began promoting the book, it became clear that his focus was on exonerating Robert Kennedy. He wrote that “scurrilous accounts” of Marilyn Monroe’s affair with Robert Kennedy had “led to the completely groundless assertion of a link between Robert Kennedy and Marilyn’s death.” Spoto termed the connection hilarious and went on to say, “It is important to establish definitively the truth of this matter.”

  Spoto’s methodology was the systematic elimination of witnesses’ statements and established facts. He pointedly ignored Murray’s statements to the BBC, 20/20, and the New York Post; Marilyn’s phone records; Jean Kennedy Smith’s note to Marilyn; the helicopter logs; Dr. Robert Litman’s notes regarding Marilyn and the Kennedys; Senator George Smathers’s statements; Daryl Gates’s confirmation that Robert Kennedy was in Los Angeles on August 4, 1962; Mayor Sam Yorty’s disclosures; and Fred Otash’s statements to the Los Angeles Times.

  Rather than refute evidence proffered by investigative journalists, Spoto elected to assassinate the character of those bearing ill news of Camelot. Accusing Anthony Summers of manipulating and misquoting statements of interviewees, Spoto wrote: “In Goddess Summers ignored and/or frequently mispresented those he claims to have interviewed.” Summers took Spoto to the Queen’s Bench division of the English courts. Examination of Summers’s recorded interviews revealed the integrity of his research, and in a settlement on March 28, 1994, Spoto agreed to pay Summers a sizable sum as well as print a retraction of his accusations in the paperback and any future editions of his book.

  Spoto also maligned Norman Mailer, Fred Guiles, Peter Brown, and a host of other writers before devoting dozens of pages to the denigration of Robert Slatzer, whom he accused of building a “nefarious industry” out of his absurd mur
der theories and “the nonsense about a love affair between Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy.”

  Spoto’s biography came at the end of decades of deception. Many of the key witnesses had died, and none had ever been required to speak under oath. It seemed that the full story of what happened to Marilyn Monroe would never be known. In her last interview, which appeared in Life the day before she died, Marilyn pleaded, “Please don’t make me a joke.” But the joke had been on those who wanted to know the truth and had so often been deceived.

  In the fall of 1993, however, the remaining tumblers of truth fell into place—unlocking the vault of secrets that had been so firmly shut on August 4, 1962.

  In all the accounts of that fatal day, Eunice Murray’s son-in-law, handyman Norman Jefferies, vanished from the narrative of events sometime before noon on Saturday. In Eunice Murray’s book, Marilyn: The Last Months, he is described as working on the remodeling of Monroe’s kitchen early that Saturday morning. Jefferies is not identified as being on the scene again until the next day. Murray told Clemmons and the press that the first person she called after Greenson discovered Monroe’s body was Jefferies—asking him to come and replace the broken window. In newspaper photos he is pictured at the Monroe residence Sunday morning as he is being led from the kitchen side door, along with Pat Newcomb, by the police. He is next seen opening the car door for Murray as she steps into her Dodge, and also pictured holding the passenger door open for Newcomb.

  Inexplicably, Jefferies was never questioned by the police or the press. When Anthony Summers tried to locate him during his research for Goddess, he noted that Murray seemed anxious to prevent their meeting. “Murray seemed oddly reluctant to assist me in reaching Jefferies,” Summers stated. In 1983 Ted Landreth located Jefferies, living in Laguna Beach, California, but found him reluctant to be interviewed, ultimately refusing Landreth’s phone calls.

  Ten years later Jefferies was located in Russellville, Arkansas. Terminally ill and confined to a wheelchair, he spoke for the first time about the tragic events that occurred that Saturday—a day he termed “the worst he had ever experienced in his entire lifetime.”

  Stating, “I guess they can’t very well electrocute me in a wheelchair,” Jefferies disclosed that he never left the proximity of the Monroe residence on that horrific day. He had remained with his mother-in-law, Eunice Murray, from the time he arrived Saturday morning at about eight o’clock until he departed Sunday morning at approximately seven-thirty. He had been present during all the events that took place. “I was there in the living room with Eunice when Marilyn died, and after that all hell broke loose,” Jefferies stated. He was there when Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford arrived on Saturday afternoon. He was there when the ambulance arrived on Saturday night. He was there when Dr. Greenson arrived and Marilyn died in the guest cottage. He was there in the early hours of Sunday morning when Monroe’s body was moved to the bedroom. Norman Jefferies had been a key witness.

  After years of obfuscation, Jefferies clarified that the reason Murray called Greenson that Saturday night was not “the light under the bedroom door” or “the telephone cord under the bedroom door” or anything to do with Murray’s Piscean qualities; it was the sight of Monroe slumped on the bed of the guest cottage in a comatose state, her hand clutching the telephone.

  Though many of the puzzling questions surrounding Marilyn Monroe’s death were finally answered, new questions evolved. The key witnesses had conspired to conceal Bobby Kennedy’s presence at Monroe’s residence, as well as the time, location, and circumstances of her death. But why did officials substantiate the key witnesses’ statements, and why did the key witnesses corroborate the officials? If it was a “national security matter,” as Chief Reddin and Mayor Yorty stated, what was the secret at the heart of the matter? What had locked this diverse group of people into a complex conspiracy to conceal the truth? And why was Marilyn Monroe murdered?

  The 1982 district attorney’s report on Marilyn Monroe’s death concluded:

  If Marilyn Monroe did not commit suicide or suffer an accidental drug overdose, she was murdered. Her murder would have required a massive, in-place conspiracy covering all of the principals at the death scene on August 4 and 5, 1962; the actual killer or killers; the Chief Medical Examiner–Coroner; the autopsy surgeon; and most all of the police officers assigned to the case as well as their superiors at the LAPD. Several variations on this theme can be imagined, but each required the involvement of a significant number of persons. Our inquiries and document examinations uncovered no credible evidence supporting a murder theory.

  However, Norman Jefferies’s revelations confirm that there was indeed “a massive, in-place conspiracy covering all of the principals at the death scene on August 4 and 5, 1962,” and among those seated in the Chapel of the Palms at Marilyn Monroe’s funeral were accomplices to her murder and the cover-up.

  That the mystery of Marilyn Monroe’s death has never been resolved has a great deal to do with the mystery of her life, which was secretive and very private. Norman Jefferies revealed that some of the key witnesses also led very secretive lives and had hidden agendas. In order to comprehend what happened on that fatal Saturday, it is necessary to know and understand the victim and the complex relationships she had with the disparate group of principals at the death scene.

  One cannot resolve the secrets of life and death, or know how chance or fate deals with people or understand one of the great crimes of the twentieth century, without knowing the whole story. And while the mystery of Marilyn Monroe’s murder will be solved, the mystery of her remarkable life can never be fully explained.

  PART II

  1926–1946

  Gemini Child

  15

  Silent Witness

  One can’t say how life is, how chance or fate deals with people, except by telling the tale.

  —Hannah Arendt

  Marilyn Monroe’s first childhood memory was of being suffocated by her mad grandmother, Della. “I remember waking up from my nap fighting for my life. Something was pressed against my face. It could have been a pillow. I fought with all my strength,” she recalled many years later.

  Della Monroe Grainger had a history of mental illness, and her first husband, Otis Elmer Monroe, died in a mental institution in 1909. When Della married oil field worker Charles Grainger in 1923, they lived in a bungalow on Rhode Island Avenue in Hawthorne, a suburb of Los Angeles. Grainger soon learned of Della’s mercurial moods and was often the object of her irrational rages. Their stormy relationship ended when Grainger arranged to be transferred across the globe to the safety of the oil fields in the wilds of Borneo.

  Thrown into despair by her abandonment, Della turned to religion for solace, and joined Sister Aimee Semple McPherson’s Church of the Foursquare Gospel, where Sister Aimee would seemingly rise into the air and glow with glory at the end of her illuminating sermons—thanks to the miraculous effects installed by the Otto K. Olesen Illuminating Company of Hollywood. But no amount of illumination could brighten the darkness descending on Della. A manic-depressive psychosis was enveloping her mind.

  In December 1925, Della’s daughter by Otis Monroe, Gladys, took the Pacific Electric Red Car from Hollywood to Hawthorne to make an uncommon visit to her mother. Informing Della that she was pregnant, and that the father of the child didn’t want to marry her, Gladys hoped to stay with her mother until the baby was born. But Della was planning on sailing to Borneo, hoping for a reconciliation with Charles Grainger. A solution was found in Della’s suggestion that Gladys stay with Wayne and Ida Bolender, neighbors who lived across the street from Della on Rhode Island Avenue.

  The Bolenders were devout Christian fundamentalists who took care of children for a fee. It was arranged for Gladys to stay at their home until the baby was born, and to remain for a few weeks after the birth. Fellow workers at the film laboratory in Hollywood where Gladys was employed chipped in to help pay for the baby’s delivery. Norma Jeane was born on June
1, 1926, and baptized by Aimee Semple McPherson several weeks later. In July, Gladys returned to her work at Consolidated Film Laboratories and moved back to her Hollywood apartment. An illegitimate baby was a problem for a single young woman working in Hollywood during the twenties, and Norma Jeane remained with the Bolenders, who were paid five dollars a week.

  “I’ll come every Saturday and stay over whenever I can, if that’s all right,” Gladys told them. According to Wayne Bolender, “Gladys would come to visit nearly every Saturday around noon. Sometimes she would spend the night, but she usually had a date on Saturday night or a party to go to and would return to Hollywood after a visit of several hours.”

  Della’s attempt at a reconciliation with Charles Grainger proved to be financially and emotionally draining, and when Della returned from Borneo alone in October 1926, she began drinking heavily. Moving back to her residence across the street from the Bolenders, she soon became fascinated by her grandchild, Norma Jeane, and offered to take care of her. However, Gladys decided that it was best for the baby to stay on with the Bolenders, and it was made clear to Della that Norma Jeane had been placed in their care. Della resented the Bolenders’ control over her grandchild, and her frequent visits to see the baby often ended in arguments.

  Noting that Della was frequently inebriated and acting strangely, Ida Bolender became concerned when Della began taking Norma Jeane across the street for long periods of time, and it was during the summer of 1927 that the “incident” occurred. Della had taken Norma Jeane for the afternoon and attempted to smother the baby. There was only one tiny, silent witness, and she recalled it from the vague recesses of early traumatic memory.

  Sensing that Norma Jeane was frightened by something that had occurred during her stay at Della Grainger’s house, the Bolenders began discouraging Della’s visits. And in August 1927, Della descended into the snake pit of madness. Wayne Bolender recalled seeing her head up the walk toward the house in a blind rage. She was yelling incoherently, demanding to see her grandchild. He quickly shut the front door and locked it. Hearing the commotion, Ida entered the living room from the kitchen and watched Della through the window. Della was screaming and pounding on the door like a madwoman. Terrified, Ida yelled, “Call the police, Wayne. Hurry!” Before the police arrived Della tried to break down the door. Smashing through a panel with her fist, she injured her hand and blood spurted from the wound. When the police arrived, they subdued Della and forcibly took her away. Wayne vividly recalled his last image of Della as they dragged her off, her head thrown back, screaming to the heavens as she beseeched God’s help.