Authors: Adela Gregory
Crypt 33 (31 page)
22
Cyanosis
L
ife
magazine's Bureau Chief Richard Stolley, was awakened at 6
A.M.
Pacific time and told that Marilyn Monroe was dead from an apparent suicide. The magazine had featured the beautiful star on its pages many times and Stolley was heartbroken when he heard the news. He knew he needed the most talented, aggressive journalist and photographer to handle the assignment. Since there would undoubtedly be crowds, media, police, and publicity people rushing to Monroe's home, he called upon the talents of Thomas V. Thompson, Los Angeles staff correspondent, to write the story and Leigh Weiner, his ace photographer, to capture whatever he could on film.
ife
magazine's Bureau Chief Richard Stolley, was awakened at 6
A.M.
Pacific time and told that Marilyn Monroe was dead from an apparent suicide. The magazine had featured the beautiful star on its pages many times and Stolley was heartbroken when he heard the news. He knew he needed the most talented, aggressive journalist and photographer to handle the assignment. Since there would undoubtedly be crowds, media, police, and publicity people rushing to Monroe's home, he called upon the talents of Thomas V. Thompson, Los Angeles staff correspondent, to write the story and Leigh Weiner, his ace photographer, to capture whatever he could on film.
Leigh Weiner had done three photo sessions with Marilyn, and she had always been cooperative, unlike many other well-known beauties of the time. She knew how to pose for the camera, her skin was beautiful, and she knew her best angles. But it wasn't her body that appealed to Weiner's finer senses, it was her beautiful blue-gray eyes that penetrated the camera lens. They spoke without words, showing the warmth of her true nature and her innate vulnerability. That was her real appeal. She was an easy subject, completely aware of how she looked: she knew her flaws and used her advantages each time she was in front of the camera.
Weiner and Thompson, an unbeatable team, were committed to getting the complete story. The early morning call from their senior editor announcing her death was a shock, although the circumstances behind her demise would not be clear until the experts delved deeper into the mystery.
The two men rushed to the scene before the body was removed. The anticipated crowd of reporters, police, and some fifteen photographers began to swell as the sun rose over the Santa Monica Mountains. The policemen in charge directed that reporters wait in the street. They were told that the medical examiner and coroner were attending to their duties inside.
It became eerily silent when Monroe's body was wheeled out the french doors adjoining her bedroom. The body was draped with a black blanket and for moments the crowd was stunned. Only camera clicks were heard as the stretcher was loaded into the black van. Leigh took the standard shots of the action, as did the other photographers, but he knew well that Dick Stolley would want only exclusive photos of this event. Stolley had suggested Leigh try to follow the van to the morgue. Knowing it would be difficult, they nevertheless agreed it would be worth a try. Leigh promised not to break any laws and not to jeopardize his own reputation or that of the magazine. He also promised not to photograph the body even if he were invited to do so. Only a photograph of the crypt would be allowedâand all photos would be carefully scrutinized before publication. Weiner was on his way.
The Coroner's Office was located in downtown Los Angeles in the Hall of Justice at 211 West Temple Street, adorned with a gray stone façade. The offices occupied the first floor and the basement of the building and there was additional subterranean refrigerated storage space for use when needed. It contained fifty private crypts and laboratory space. The county coroner or one of a half-dozen staff pathologists would supervise and perform the autopsies.
It was nearly midnight on Sunday and all was quiet in downtown L.A. Weiner stopped at a local store to purchase three bottles of the most expensive scotch whiskey he could find. Armed with his camera and the bag of scotch, Leigh strode confidently down the long, bleak hallway to the morgue.
He quickly fabricated a story that he was to meet a friend named Billy Burton. He asked the three men on duty where Billy could be found, explaining that they were supposed to party together. Since no one had heard of the man, Weiner asked if his friend Billy might have been transferred. Nobody bothered to question him as he offered the night crew a drink.
Small talk about the work in the morgue gradually shifted to talk of the big event of the dayâMarilyn Monroe's death. Weiner, playing innocent, suggested that because she had presumably died in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, the body would probably be brought to this morgue. The nondrinker of the crew opened up and revealed her body was indeed in the morgue, in Crypt 33. The informant invited the photographer to the steel-lined, refrigerated corridor.
“Want to see it?” asked another of the men, who had been downing the whiskey. Before Weiner could reply, his drinking buddy asked if Weiner had ever seen a dead body before. Leigh assured him he had seen many.
One of the assistants was assigned to tag the toe and was preparing to do so when Weiner snapped the first photo. The inscription on the tag read, CRYPT 33â
MARILYN MONROE.
The assistant opened the door and slid the drawer out. A white sheet covered Marilyn's body to her ankles. The tag was then tied to her left big toe.
MARILYN MONROE.
The assistant opened the door and slid the drawer out. A white sheet covered Marilyn's body to her ankles. The tag was then tied to her left big toe.
Leigh Weiner politely asked the gentlemen if he could photograph the tag on her toe. No one objected. One photo of the toe led to another and another. Before long, Weiner removed the sheet. He eagerly took exposure after exposure, forgetting his promise to Richard Stolley. The opportunity was too good to pass up. After one hour and two rolls of film, he had taken shots of every angle of her nude body with and without the sheet. He left the liquor and left the morgue.
Weiner had a total of five rolls of film of the day's events so far. He took them to be processed and ordered one set of proofs of the body and sent the other three rolls to Stolley without mentioning his deed. On Monday morning he secured the negatives and proofs of Marilyn Monroe's corpse in a safe-deposit box. All the while he gambled that one day an investigation might find them useful. In the meantime, nobody would see them or be able to use them to degrade Marilyn's memory.
The three rolls of film taken of the house and Westwood Mortuary on that Sunday morning were ignored by the Los Angeles
Life
chief when they arrived. A decision was made to display her life in pictures instead of concentrating on her morbid death.
Life
chief when they arrived. A decision was made to display her life in pictures instead of concentrating on her morbid death.
It didn't take long in Hollywood for the word
murder
to be connected with Marilyn Monroe's supposed suicide. Sergeant Jack Clemmons, who was the first police officer on the scene in her home, immediately suspected foul play. He noticed the bedroom looked “staged.” The suspicious behavior of housekeeper Eunice Murray on Sunday morning, when she had washed clothes and cleaned the house with apparent feelings of terror, also made the sergeant take notice as she claimed she had found Marilyn's door locked and called Dr. Greenson. Then Guy Hockett, an employee of the Westwood Village Mortuary, noticed that rigor mortis had already set in when he arrived at about 5
A.M.
Sunday, indicating that her death had to have occurred many hours earlier than he had been told.
murder
to be connected with Marilyn Monroe's supposed suicide. Sergeant Jack Clemmons, who was the first police officer on the scene in her home, immediately suspected foul play. He noticed the bedroom looked “staged.” The suspicious behavior of housekeeper Eunice Murray on Sunday morning, when she had washed clothes and cleaned the house with apparent feelings of terror, also made the sergeant take notice as she claimed she had found Marilyn's door locked and called Dr. Greenson. Then Guy Hockett, an employee of the Westwood Village Mortuary, noticed that rigor mortis had already set in when he arrived at about 5
A.M.
Sunday, indicating that her death had to have occurred many hours earlier than he had been told.
As photographer for
Life,
Weiner had seen many dead bodies. He was aware that after death, the skin turns a gray-white color and appears waxy. His camera had caught the skin on Marilyn's body appearing somewhat bluish in color with blue streaks running through her skin.
Life,
Weiner had seen many dead bodies. He was aware that after death, the skin turns a gray-white color and appears waxy. His camera had caught the skin on Marilyn's body appearing somewhat bluish in color with blue streaks running through her skin.
This would suggest that instead of a slow death, as would occur when massive amounts of drugs were digested through the stomach, the death could have been rapid and caused by drugs that were “predigested,” i.e., a liquid, an injection, or an anal entry. Rumors were flying among the fifty employees at the County Coroner's Office. Although there was much speculation about death by injection of barbiturates, there was only one hip injection mark, which Dr. Hyman Engelberg, Marilyn's internist, claimed was the site where he had given her a shot two days prior to her death.
It was not clear where the fatal injection site might be, if there was one. Professional murderers often concealed injection sites by chosing areas that could not be easily detected, such as under the fingernails or toenails, under the arms, or in the scalp.
Leigh Weiner wasn't the only one aware of Marilyn's blue body. He had asked a local physician about the coloration, and the doctor told him that a bluish discoloration was a condition known as cyanosis, a slightly bluish, grayish, slatelike or dark purple discoloration of the skin due to abnormal reduced levels of hemoglobin in the blood.
The doctor described how the lungs collapsed if the body lost oxygen rapidly with death resulting immediately. Deprived of oxygen the skin, too, suffocated, causing the cells to die individually. If this occurred, the skin retained a bluish cast. A cyanotic appearance indicated that death had occurred rapidly and thus excluded the possibility of the slow ingestion of drugs through the stomach as the cause.
Contradictions ran rampant throughout the morgue that weekend.
Six months after Marilyn's death, Hedda Hopper, never one of Marilyn's favorites, had her own column for the
Los Angeles Times.
She had uncovered a lead, different from Leigh Weiner's, who told of the body's cyanotic condition. Hopper put together a sensational piece about how a very famous movie star at death had a “blue body,” and the story ran in the
Times
Bulldog Edition at 6
P.M.
on August 4, 1962. She suggested the condition might be due to either cyanide poisoning or an overdose of a drug that could cause the cells in the body to lose oxygen rapidly and die.
Los Angeles Times.
She had uncovered a lead, different from Leigh Weiner's, who told of the body's cyanotic condition. Hopper put together a sensational piece about how a very famous movie star at death had a “blue body,” and the story ran in the
Times
Bulldog Edition at 6
P.M.
on August 4, 1962. She suggested the condition might be due to either cyanide poisoning or an overdose of a drug that could cause the cells in the body to lose oxygen rapidly and die.
When Weiner read Hopper's story, he wondered whether the truth about Marilyn would ever be known. Although the column would normally run again in the next edition, it was killed and the story only appeared once.
Many periodicals ran stories about the life and death of the movie star that left smiles on the faces of those who adored her. And on every anniversary of her death, speculation about her murder resurfaced. On the twentieth anniversary, an article written by Leigh Weiner appeared in the “Calendar” section of the
Los Angeles Times.
Weiner was asked, “Have you ever taken a picture that bothered you?” and his first response was to mention the special assignment he had done on the death of Marilyn. He still wondered about it. The story he told then was the first time he recorded how he was able to take photographs of the corpse in Crypt 33 almost twelve hours after it was autopsied.
Los Angeles Times.
Weiner was asked, “Have you ever taken a picture that bothered you?” and his first response was to mention the special assignment he had done on the death of Marilyn. He still wondered about it. The story he told then was the first time he recorded how he was able to take photographs of the corpse in Crypt 33 almost twelve hours after it was autopsied.
After the story ran on August 9, 1982, Leigh received a phone call from the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. The D.A.'s representative told the photographer he had read his story in the
Times
and wanted to meet with him. He invited Mr. Weiner to join him for breakfast.
Times
and wanted to meet with him. He invited Mr. Weiner to join him for breakfast.
Weiner knew the District Attorney's Office was looking for something, but decided to meet him as requested at the posh Pacific Dining Car restaurant where great food was served to the downtown Los Angeles elite. An Old English Pub atmosphere dominated the luxurious rooms furnished with red leather booths. The tables were covered with white linen tablecloths and the lights were set low even for breakfast.
The ice water had yet to be poured when the most vocal of the three men who had showed up from the D.A.'s Office stated that they didn't think the photos and negatives belonged to Mr. Weiner. They believed the photos belonged instead to their office.
Weiner knew he was the rightful owner, and he told them so. After a few go-rounds he let them know that a subpoena from the District Attorney's Office might not even get him to release the pictures.
When breakfast was served, the group spokesman complimented Leigh on his initiative in getting the photos in the first place. No further mention was made of any District Attorney's Office investigation or forthcoming subpoena.
Of the three, the short stocky man with short black hair continually asked the most intelligent questions. His face was pleasant and kind. Weiner took a liking to him, but not enough to make him relinquish his photos.
Breakfast lasted all of twenty-five minutes. The check was picked up. Weiner graciously thanked the men and the short man with black hair thanked him for his time. Cordial good-byes were exchanged. Weiner never heard from the District Attorney's Office again. The district attorney did not consider Weiner's photos to be of any use. And the photos remain in Weiner's safe deposit box somewhere in Los Angeles.
23
The Final Autopsy
B
y the 1960s, drug use was soaring to unprecedented levels. In 1962, when Marilyn Monroe died, sedatives and sleeping pills were fast becoming a major drug problem as physicians and psychiatrists, ill-informed of their addictive hazards and long-term side effects, were overprescribing and overmedicating. Careless prescribing of these drugs led to increased accidental overdoses and attempted suicides. However, sophisticated methods of detecting suicide or accidental overdose had not caught up with the growing magnitude of the drug epidemic. In 1972, the Uniform Rating System standardized detection of drug overdose. Widely used by coroners, pathologists, forensic physicians, and medical physicians since then, it has made drug overdose much more detectable and diagnosable. When Marilyn Monroe's body was found, the accurate measure and analysis by the high-tech devices now in use by forensic scientists was not available to pathologists. In addition, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office was ill-equipped, but the crucial test on her colon could have been done.
y the 1960s, drug use was soaring to unprecedented levels. In 1962, when Marilyn Monroe died, sedatives and sleeping pills were fast becoming a major drug problem as physicians and psychiatrists, ill-informed of their addictive hazards and long-term side effects, were overprescribing and overmedicating. Careless prescribing of these drugs led to increased accidental overdoses and attempted suicides. However, sophisticated methods of detecting suicide or accidental overdose had not caught up with the growing magnitude of the drug epidemic. In 1972, the Uniform Rating System standardized detection of drug overdose. Widely used by coroners, pathologists, forensic physicians, and medical physicians since then, it has made drug overdose much more detectable and diagnosable. When Marilyn Monroe's body was found, the accurate measure and analysis by the high-tech devices now in use by forensic scientists was not available to pathologists. In addition, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office was ill-equipped, but the crucial test on her colon could have been done.
To add to the confusion, Dr. Theodore Curphy had stopped the autopsy midstream. Otherwise, Marilyn's death would have undoubtedly been declared a homicide immediately. Elton Noels, a retired investigator for the Coroner's Office, stated that it was not uncommon to suddenly “stop” incomplete autopsies for a variety of reasons. The public's right to know was less important than private or political pressure. With the longtime Hollywood practice of protecting the public image of its stars, Curphy had been pressured many times before by insurance companies, studios, and/or political factions. Considered a gentleman by his colleagues, he had come to barely tolerate politicians and Hollywood and the external pressures they exerted on his office. Curphy had been brought out from Long Island, New York, to upgrade the archaic Los Angeles Coroner's Office to a modern medical system. He appointed medical doctors to be in charge of autopsies for the first time. (Prior to that time Los Angeles coroners were not required to have licenses to practice either medicine or forensic pathology.)
But apparently Theodore Curphy had buckled before outside pressures when, on June 16, 1959, he had declared the death of television's Superman, George Reeves, a suicide. There had been plenty of evidence to contradict a verdict of suicide that time, too. The firm of Nick Harris Detectives, retained by Reeves's mother, proved Superman was murdered.
As he relates in his own book,
Coroner,
published long after Marilyn's death, L.A. County Coroner Thomas Noguchi had a part in the controversies surrounding the deaths of Natalie Wood and William Holden. And he had learned to fudge the facts well from his predecessor, Dr. Curphy. Noguchi's introductory lesson came when Curphy assigned him his first celebrity autopsy, Marilyn Monroe.
Coroner,
published long after Marilyn's death, L.A. County Coroner Thomas Noguchi had a part in the controversies surrounding the deaths of Natalie Wood and William Holden. And he had learned to fudge the facts well from his predecessor, Dr. Curphy. Noguchi's introductory lesson came when Curphy assigned him his first celebrity autopsy, Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn Monroe's autopsy report includes several areas of dispute in the findings and the conclusions. There are a number of discrepancies in the evidence gathered to determine the cause of death. First is the matter of the barbiturates purportedly ingested orally by Miss Monroe. The lethal dose that caused the actress's death was the high concentrations of pentobarbital (Nembutal), 13.0 mg. percent in her liver and 4.5 mg. percent in the blood, and chloral hydrate, 8 mg. percent in her blood sample. These two drugs detected in her blood and liver constituted a lethal dose. The twenty-five 1½ gr. capsules of Nembutal ordered by her internist Dr. Engelbert on August 3, 1962, was her last prescription, filled just two days prior to her death. The Nembutal vial was found empty by her bed. Based upon the high Nembutal concentration in her liver, it is estimated she would have had to orally ingest forty tablets (a minor variance, depending on her absorption rate). By August 4, Miss Monroe would not have had more than twenty-five capsules at her disposal. With her chronic insomnia, it is very likely she had already taken several the previous days. Therefore, ingesting twenty-five Nembutals or fewer would hardly account for the concentration of 13.0 mg. percent in her liver, a gross discrepancy. Whitey Snyder states that during the sixteen years he knew Marilyn, she would usually start by taking one or two sleeping pills from seven-thirty to eight, and by nine-thirty she would have taken one or two more. Shortly after that time, the medication would take effect and she would fall asleep. Were she to wake up, she repeated the dosage of one or two into the early morning.
According to interviews with publicist Arthur Jacob's ex-wife, Natalie, she and her then-boyfriend Arthur were attending a Hollywood Bowl Concert featuring Henry Mancini and Ferrante and Teicher on the night of Monroe's death. In compliance with a curfew law, that event must have concluded by 11
P.M.
Natalie remembers the evening clearly. A messenger from the Hollywood Bowl interrupted their evening with the news of Marilyn Monroe's death. She went home immediately after the concert and did not see Jacobs for two days. He later told her that Marilyn's death had been awful and that everything publicized about Marilyn's life was “fudged.”
P.M.
Natalie remembers the evening clearly. A messenger from the Hollywood Bowl interrupted their evening with the news of Marilyn Monroe's death. She went home immediately after the concert and did not see Jacobs for two days. He later told her that Marilyn's death had been awful and that everything publicized about Marilyn's life was “fudged.”
That story narrows the time of death to prior to 11
P.M.
Although both Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg claimed she expired in her home around three-thirty Sunday morning, in actuality she died before 11
P.M.
on Saturday, August 4, 1962.
P.M.
Although both Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg claimed she expired in her home around three-thirty Sunday morning, in actuality she died before 11
P.M.
on Saturday, August 4, 1962.
More corroborating evidence of an earlier time for Monroe's death came from Sergeant Jack Clemmons, the first policeman to arrive on the scene. He reported twelve minutes after Dr. Engelberg called the LAPD at 4:35
A.M.
He noted the lividity (purplish-colored skin) on the back (posterior) of her body and the absence of lividity on the front (anterior) part of her body. Since blood settles downward due to gravity after death, his conclusion was that she had died on her back. He also noted that rigor mortis had already set in. Several variables determine how long after death rigor mortis occurs, among them temperature, age, weight, amount of clothing, degree of activity, and general circulation. The stiffening in Marilyn's body indicated that the time of death had been six to eight hours prior to Clemmons's arrival. That would make the probable hour of death between 8 and 10
P.M.
, not 3:40
A.M.
Saturday, August 4, 1962, as the doctors reported.
A.M.
He noted the lividity (purplish-colored skin) on the back (posterior) of her body and the absence of lividity on the front (anterior) part of her body. Since blood settles downward due to gravity after death, his conclusion was that she had died on her back. He also noted that rigor mortis had already set in. Several variables determine how long after death rigor mortis occurs, among them temperature, age, weight, amount of clothing, degree of activity, and general circulation. The stiffening in Marilyn's body indicated that the time of death had been six to eight hours prior to Clemmons's arrival. That would make the probable hour of death between 8 and 10
P.M.
, not 3:40
A.M.
Saturday, August 4, 1962, as the doctors reported.
Monroe frequently used prescription drugs and was sophisticated and knowledgeable about her usage. Whitey Snyder says he never saw Marilyn unable to walk or so drugged that she fell down, as some would have the public believe. He claims she was always aware of what and how many pills she had taken, how much she needed, and the time intervals necessary to ensure her sleep or to attain the calming effect she was looking for. Marilyn was not a recreational drug user. Incidentally, no alcohol was found in her blood or liver samples. An accidental overdose also seems out of the question.
Death from oral ingestion of pentobarbital, as the autopsy concluded, is highly suspect. Marilyn's stomach cavity was devoid of any refractile crystals of either pentobarbital or chloral hydrate. The contents of 20 cc of mucosa removed from her stomach were examined under a polarized microscope after a crystallization process to form drug crystals, and not even a trace of Nembutal or chloral hydrate was detected. A suicide victim who orally ingested an overdose of those two drugs would certainly retain at least traces of them in the stomach.
In his book
Coroner,
Noguchi would later attempt to defend his findings by rationalizing,
Coroner,
Noguchi would later attempt to defend his findings by rationalizing,
To answer the first question concerning the empty stomach, I began my explanation with a common experience. Sometimes when you eat exotic food that doesn't “agree” with you, you suffer from indigestion, which means that the stomach is rejecting the food and not passing it into the intestines easily. But when you swallow food like steak that you've eaten for years, there is no indigestion, because the food is passed smoothly on to the intestines.
So it was with pills swallowed by habitual drug users. Marilyn Monroe had been a heavy user of sleeping pills and choral hydrate for years. Her stomach was familiar with those pills, and they were digested and “dumped” into the intestinal tract. In my experience with pill addicts, I expected to see no visible evidence of pillsâa fact that only proved they were addicts, not that they were murder victims who had been injected.
Thence his “reason” for no trace of the psychoactive drugs in the stomach cavity.
Joseph Mato, a toxicologist at the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office spells out the contradiction in Noguchi's argument. With death through oral ingestion, the concentration of drugs would be highest in the stomach when compared to stomach levels resulting from intramuscular or intravenous ingestion. Death through anal suppository or enema would also produce minute amounts, if any, in the stomach. Mato stated it is nearly impossible for a subject to die precisely at that moment when the entire medication would be absorbed beyond the stomach. Mato does not consider the frequent drug usage of the deceased as a variable.
Two leading specialists in the field of psychoactive drug-induced deaths, psychiatrist and neurologist Louis A. Gottschalk and toxicologist Robert H. Cravey, were pioneers in developing the Standard Uniform Rating System in 1972. Their findings, published in their book,
Toxicological and Pathological Studies on Psychoactive Drug-Involved Death,
enumerate autopsies of over fifteen hundred frequent drug users. Each and every autopsy of a death caused by oral ingestion included drug analysis of the stomach contents. In every case, large concentrations to lesser amounts of the specific drug taken orally were found in the stomach. These studies completely dispel previously held beliefs that “frequent drug users” have extraordinary capabilities to digest the drugs they frequently use that cause their death.
Toxicological and Pathological Studies on Psychoactive Drug-Involved Death,
enumerate autopsies of over fifteen hundred frequent drug users. Each and every autopsy of a death caused by oral ingestion included drug analysis of the stomach contents. In every case, large concentrations to lesser amounts of the specific drug taken orally were found in the stomach. These studies completely dispel previously held beliefs that “frequent drug users” have extraordinary capabilities to digest the drugs they frequently use that cause their death.
In his vast experience as the retired chief toxicologist of the Office of the Coroner of Orange County, California, Dr. Cravey states that in every case of a drug overdose through oral entry, “I have always found [drugs] in the stomach.”
Accepting the premise that Marilyn Monroe's death was not caused by her own ingestion of barbiturates, the next possibility to consider would be an overdose from another method such as intravenous and intramuscular entry using a hypodermic needle. Using a magnifying glass, Dr. Noguchi examined Monroe's entire body and found only one injection site on her left hip. In his tape recording of the actual examination of the body, he stated, “I see an area of slight ecchymosis on the lower left back,” described it as being reddish-blue and dark, indicating it was fresh. Medically this is termed an extravasated blood tumor, a swelling that results from the accumulation of blood in subcutaneous tissueâcommonly called a bruise. Though it suggested that Monroe could have been involved in a struggle, Noguchi chose to downplay the bruise. And he later dismissed it as a bruise from the injection given to Marilyn by Dr. Hyman Engelberg on August 3, thereby eliminating that avenue of entry. Regarding any further examination of Monroe's body, only the lower intestinal tract was visually and physically checked. Dr. Noguchi originally sent samples to UCLA laboratories, since the Coroner's Office was not outfitted to conduct organ testing. Through negligence, ignorance, political or business pressure, Dr. Ralph Abernathy, a Coroner's Office chief toxicologist, discarded the intestinal samples. When a suspicious Noguchi asked Abernathy what happened to them, he answered he believed the case was settled. Obviously not so to Noguchi, who later stated he wanted them analyzed due to the body's suspicious condition, specifically the empty stomach, and, as important, because of “the marked congestion and purplish discoloration of the colon.”
Also present at the autopsy was John Miner, legal-medical adviser to the D.A.'s office (who would become renowned for exposing fraud in oncologists' practices in Los Angeles) was interviewed and quoted by criminologist Fenton Bressler, stating “There is one thing about Noguchi's autopsy report that has always bothered me. The reference to the congestion and purplish discoloration of the colon. I must say that I originally did not mention it to Thomas Noguchi, but I have asked another eminent pathologist about it and he says that it is consistent with an enema [anal entry] having been used. I confronted Dr. Noguchi about the congestion and discoloration and he said, “I don't know. It is very rare that I see that in autopsy. I have no explanation.” (At the time, Noguchi had been in practice for only five years.) Bressler explains that “the anal entry is like giving a high dosage level of the drug and [the drug] would have rapid absorption into the body.”
Dr. Joseph Davis, currently a practicing pathologist in Dade County, Florida, explains the discoloration of the intestines. When you apply secobarbital (Seconal) to a litmus test (7 being neutral), it ranges between 9.7 and 10.5. The more alkaline drug pentobarbital (Nembutal) scores between 9.6 and 11. In Davis's experience an orally induced overdose of an alkaline barbiturate like Nembutal would definitely cause purplish discoloration in the stomach, and the lining would show visible damage in the autopsy. He adds, “As long as the alkalinity of the substance was as high as either Seconal or Nembutal, then it is reasonable to expect a similar reaction in the colon.”
Narrowing down the possibilities and probabilities, anal entry of the drug seems most probable through enema or suppository use. Although Noguchi at that time could not have been trained about the criminal use of suppositories or enemas, they were then being used by international spy organizations, including the CIA and the Mafia. In the 1950s, the manufacture of barbiturate suppositories continued in Puerto Rico and in Europe, although they were not commonly used. When murder was not prescribed by gunshot and when the victim was known to take psychoactive drugs, the underworld could almost guarantee undetected murder by employing suppositories or enemas. The Mafia would take advantage of the victim's reputation for either using or misusing drugs, since most pathologists consider personal habits of the deceased when making their diagnosis of death. Undoubtedly the Los Angeles Coroner's Office was either too unsophisticated or guilty of hiding pertinent facts (as it had done many times before). Either way, Marilyn's autopsy was grossly mishandled
Other books
Mulligan's Yard by Ruth Hamilton
Aurora by Friedrich Nietzsche
Playing for Keeps by Cherry Adair
Texas Wild (western romance and sex) (western romance) by Grenier, Cristina
Howl (Winter Pass Wolves Book 1) by Wood, Vivian, Hunt, Amelie
Season For Desire by Theresa Romain
Charmed I'm Sure by Elliott James
The Cowboy's Gamble: Destined For Love Series by Denison, Janelle
1Q84 by Murakami, Haruki
Stars Screaming by John Kaye