Death of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was found nude, dead in the bedroom of her Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, home on August 5th, 1962. Before the service, the outer lid and the upper half of the divided inner lid of her casket were opened so that the mourners could get a last glimpse of the deceased actress. Whitey Snyder had prepared her face for her last appearance, a promise he had made her if she were to go before him. Dressed in her favorite green Emilio Pucci dress, she held a small bouquet of pink teacup roses.

The service was held at the Westwood Memorial Park Chapel in Hollywood, and only 30 people were in attendance. Marilyn's acting coach, Lee Strasberg, delivered her eulogy, and Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow" (from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz) played at the end of the service.

The crypt at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery

Marilyn is interred at Corridor of Memories, #24, at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California, in a pink marble crypt. This is the cemetery where her foster mother Grace Goddard's aunt was buried and where Monroe in turn had arranged for Goddard to be buried.

Recent investigations

LA County DA re-investigation

A formal re-investigation in 1982 by the Los Angeles County District Attorney uncovered no evidence of foul play, but concluded that the original investigation into her death had not been conducted properly. The officers that arrived at her home had failed to secure the scene, people freely came and went, possibly contaminating or destroying evidence. The re-investigation also revealed that all lab work, tissue samples, and test results from the autopsy disappeared from the county coroner's office immediately after the official ruling had been made public. The report also suggested that Monroe's body may have been moved after death, as lividity had appeared in different parts of her body at different times.

Dr. Noguchi's assertions and memoir

Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who conducted the autopsy, claims that misplacement of samples has never happened in another case before or since. In his memoir Coroner, he also states that it was "highly likely" that Monroe's death was suicide. He concedes, however, that no trace of the barbiturates Monroe reportedly took were found in her mouth, stomach, or intestines. This has led some theorists to suggest that Monroe had been rendered unconscious by a person or persons unknown (for instance via chloral hydrate) and that a drug overdose had been administered by intravenous injection or by rectal suppository.

Rachael Bell of Court TV

According to a mini-biography of the events leading up to Monroe's untimely death written by Rachael Bell for Court TV's Crime Library, a sedative enema might have been administered on the advice of Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, as a sleep aid and as part of Greenson's larger project to wean his patient off barbiturates.

Drawing on Donald Spoto's 2001 biography, Bell elaborates on the theory that Greenson was perhaps unaware of the fact that his patient's internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, had refilled Monroe's prescription for the barbiturate Nembutal a day earlier, and that the actress may very well have ingested enough Nebutal throughout the day such that it would lethally react with the chloral hydrate later given to her. Bell writes:

Spoto makes a very persuasive case for accidental death. Dr. Greenson had been working with Dr. Hyman Engelberg to wean Marilyn off Nembutal, substituting instead chloral hydrate to help her sleep. Milton Rudin claimed that Greenson said something very important the night of Marilyn's death: "Gosh darn it! He gave her a prescription I didn't know about!"

Bell goes on to suggest that the suspicious circumstances surrounding Monroe's death are very possibly the result of an elaborate cover-up for what was, essentially, a tragic medical mistake.

John W. Miner's 'tapes' assertion

On August 5, 2005, the Los Angeles Times published an account of Monroe's death by former Los Angeles County prosecutor John W. Miner, who was present at the autopsy. Miner claims that she was not suicidal, and offered as proof his notes on audio tapes she had supposedly recorded for Greenson and that Greenson had played for him. Greenson's widow told the Times that her husband never mentioned any such tapes, which, if they ever existed, have been lost or destroyed, so there is no way to verify Miner's story.

The CBS 48 Hours investigations

In April, 2006, CBS's 48 Hours uncovered newly released FBI files that referred to a dinner party at actor Peter Lawford's beach home. Among those in attendance were Marilyn Monroe and President John F. Kennedy. Monroe had been married to playwright Arthur Miller, who had many communist friends in and out of the Hollywood and political circle. Monroe also had known associations with suspected mafiosi through her relationships with Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra.

In the summer of 1962, Monroe had visited Mexico on a shopping trip, which had led the FBI to further investigate her for communist associations. Other FBI files mentioned her relationship, or non-relationship with the Kennedy brothers (John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy). Further in the broadcast, newly discovered audio tapes led some to speculate that perhaps Monroe's death was not suicide--but perhaps an accidental overdose-related suicide. The broadcast hypothesized that Marilyn was over-ingesting barbiturates while talking on the phone with Lawford.

Kennedy connection

Most try to make a case for murder due to her connection with the Kennedy family and the sometimes strange and unprofessional relationships between Monroe and her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson; the housekeeper he hired for Monroe, Mrs. Eunice Murray; and her personal publicist, Pat Newcomb, who was hired by the Kennedys immediately following Monroe's death.

Up to four hours passed between the discovery of her body and the phone call to the Los Angeles Police Department. Jack Clemmons, the first officer on the scene, claimed that when he entered the home, Mrs. Murray was doing laundry, Monroe's room was very tidy, as though it had been cleaned prior to his arrival, and her body looked posed. In Clemmons's words, "She was face down, her arms at her side, like a soldier at attention, a phone under her torso."

Clemmons said that Dr. Greenson kept pointing to rows of pill bottles lined up neatly on her nightstand, and saying as if rehearsed, "She must have taken all of these." Clemmons said that no typical signs of drug overdose were present, namely foaming of the mouth or twisting of the body due to convulsions. The police report mentioned a broken bedroom window and glass on the floor, to which Murray claimed was the only access to the locked room. Lividity (settling of blood) in various parts of the body suggested that the body had been moved as well. Those who spoke with her in the days prior to her death would describe an upbeat, optimistic Monroe.

Trivia

• Many days after Monroe's passing in August of 1962, Mrs. Eunice Murray attempted to cash her last paycheck from Monroe, but it was declined and marked "deceased." This check, one of the last that Monroe ever wrote on her Roxbury Drive Branch account at City National Bank in Beverly Hills, is today on display at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum in Hollywood, CA.
• Mrs. Murray, a woman of modest means, left the country on a lengthy transatlantic cruise voyage and was gone for most of the Fall of 1962.

See also

• Marilyn Monroe
• Suicide
• Autopsy
• Coroner
• Forensic science

External links

• Autopsy Report

• Summary of the gaps in the documentation, with a photo.