Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (16 page)

Approximately 10:30 PM

Joe Naar and his wife Dolores leave Peter Lawford’s house. They state that everything seems fine at the time they left. Peter Lawford was pretty drunk by the end of the night but, in any event, he certainly never let on that anything unusual was going on, and everything seemed perfectly normal. Dolores said “There wasn’t a word about Marilyn.” Her impression and later conclusion was “Peter probably called Jack or Bobby and was told to take care of things—do whatever he had to do. And do it yourself—don’t involve anybody else under any circumstances.
¹¹¹

10:30- 11:00 PM

Peter Lawford calls the White House immediately after getting the news from Rudin. Some writers have pointed out that President Kennedy was in Hyannis Port, not in Washington; however, the White House operator was capable of patching calls through to the President almost anywhere in the world and did so for Lawford’s calls, which were given high priority. This call was confirmed by Dr. Robert Litman, a member of LAPD’s “Marilyn Monroe suicide investigation team.”
¹¹²

10:30- 11:00 PM

Peter Levathes, Chief Production Executive at
20th Century Fox
receives a “panicked call” from
Fox
publicist Frank Nell that
Fox
security guards be rushed over to Marilyn’s home—and they quickly are.
¹¹³

10:45- 11:15 PM

Los Angeles Chief of Police Bill Parker is awakened by an urgent phone call that has been routed through the main LAPD switchboard. Chief Parker then notifies members of the LAPD Intelligence Squad of a special meeting at 7 a.m. the next morning.
¹¹⁴

Very close to 11:00 PM

Joe Naar arrives at their home with his wife and after going in and putting on his pajamas, gets a phone call from Peter Lawford. Lawford asks Naar, who lives very close to Marilyn’s house, if he can run over and check on her. Naar agrees to go over and check on her, but just as he is leaving, receives a phone call from attorney Rudin informing him that now he needn’t bother because Dr. Greenson has simply given her a sedative and everything is okay.
¹¹⁵

11:00 PM

Arthur Jacobs arrives at Marilyn’s house. Confirmation that Marilyn was now dead comes via Jacobs’ later statements that he had seen her when “I went out there at eleven o’clock.” By the time that Jacobs arrives, there are already many “others present.”
¹¹⁶

10:30 PM & After

According to Norman Jeffries, he and the housekeeper return to the house and find Marilyn, apparently dead, in the guest house, face down in the bed there. Eunice calls an ambulance and then calls Dr. Greenson. Greenson tells Eunice to call Dr. Engleberg also. Jeffries states that he was waiting at the front gate for the ambulance and then saw Peter Lawford and Pat Newcomb (Marilyn’s press agent) arrive at the house. New- comb became hysterical, screaming at Eunice who was very distraught. Jeffries takes Eunice into the house as he hears the ambulance, and then Dr. Greenson arrives at the house. Jeffries states that “After that, all hell broke loose—it was horrible”; that Dr. Engelberg arrived around midnight and they moved Marilyn’s body from the guest cottage into her bedroom in the main house; that the “locked room suicide scenario was formulated by some plainclothes officials” ; that police cars were arriving, fire trucks, a police helicopter landing at the golf course, and another ambulance. He stated that the place was swarming with about a dozen plainclothes officers (he had no idea who they were) and then they disappeared as suddenly as they had arrived.
¹¹⁷
(As noted, Jeffries testimony is suspect)

Jeffries testimony is corroborated, however, by ambulance driver James Hall, who states that he and his partner arrived at Marilyn’s home a few minutes after receiving a “Code-3” call. Hall confirmed the presence of Peter Lawford, Dr. Greenson, and identified the hysterical woman as Pat Newcomb. Hall states they found Marilyn in a comatose state on the bed in the guest cottage, placed her upon the floor and attempted to resuscitate her. Dr. Greenson then directed them to remove the resuscitator and attempt manual CPR, which they did, as Greenson attached a heart needle to a syringe and attempted to inject adrenaline directly into her heart. But the needle hit a rib, Dr. Greenson leaned into the injection anyway, according to Hall, and Marilyn “succumbed” to death a few moments later.
¹¹⁸

(Note that no evidence of needle marks was found at autopsy even though they specifically examined for same.)
Investigator Anthony Summers located two employees of an ambulance company who echoed the same story; one stating that he was one of two attendants who were summoned to Marilyn’s home but that “She was dead and they wouldn’t let us take her.” (Apparently California law technically prohibited transport of a corpse in an ambulance.) An executive at the ambulance company also told a District Attorney investigator that Marilyn was in a coma from an overdose when their ambulance arrived at her home, and that she died at Santa Monica Hospital; Summers concluded that the body was then returned to the home as part of the cover-up. There are, however, credible sightings of an ambulance by neighbors, as additional evidence that one was summoned. Yet Marilyn was on the bed in the bedroom of the house when police arrived, not in the cottage.
¹¹⁹

Mr. & Mrs. Abe Landau, who lived next door, reported that when they returned home late on Saturday night (at about 1:00 a.m.), they saw an ambulance and a police car parked in the cul-de-sac in front of Marilyn’s home. Other neighbors reported hearing a helicopter immediately overhead around midnight. Mr. Landau stated that “the place was like Grand Central Station. The cars were all the way up the alley ... Some limousine was here ... And, of course, police cars and the ambulance.”
¹²⁰

Housekeeper Eunice finally admitted the truth much later. In an interview for the 1985 documentary
Say Goodbye
to the President, she at first stuck to the original cover story. When the cameras stopped rolling (but the microphone was still on), she said, “Why, at my age, do I still have to cover up this thing?” They asked her what she meant, and she revealed that she had seen Bobby Kennedy at Mari-lyn’s house that afternoon and that had obviously been the reason that Marilyn was so upset. She confirmed the two were definitely having a romantic affair. She also stated that when she called for help, Marilyn was still alive when “the doctor and an ambulance arrived” and also confirmed the coverup, explaining: “It became so sticky that the protectors of Robert Kennedy, you know, had to step in and protect him.”
¹²¹

It was also confirmed by investigator Billy Woodfield and several former LAPD officers that the leader of the plainclothes officers at Marilyn’s home late that night was Captain James Hamilton, head of the LAPD Intelligence Division and an ardent Kennedy ally. LAPD Chief Bill Parker was another staunch Kennedy ally and was rumored to be the Kennedy’s choice to soon replace Hoover as Director of the FBI.
¹²²

Two former LAPD Chiefs of Police, Daryl Gates and Tom Reddin, stated that informant sightings placing Robert Kennedy at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on August 4, 1962 had been reported to them. It was also confirmed that the two individuals at times accompanying Robert Kennedy during his visit were two detectives who had been assigned to him.
¹²³

The important thing to take away from all this information is that an
ambulance was definitely called,
and Marilyn was apparently still alive when help first arrived. There were plainclothes police officers at Marilyn’s home. They can deny it for a million years (and probably will), obfuscating the facts with disappearing documents and an obvious stonewall cover-up—but that’s what actually happened.

12:10 am

Beverly Hills police officer Lynn Franklin testified that he pulled over a dark sedan traveling east on Olympic Boulevard at a speed of approximately 75 miles per hour. Officer Franklin cautiously approached the vehicle and, shining his flashlight into the car, immediately recognized the driver as being Peter Law- ford and one of the two other occupants as being Attorney General Robert Ken-nedy; a third man he later confirmed as Dr. Ralph Greenson. Lawford informed Officer Franklin that he was driving the Attorney General to the Beverly Hilton Hotel on an urgent matter. Officer Franklin reminded Lawford that he was in a 35 m.p.h. zone and waved him on.
¹²⁴

Lynn Franklin is the most highly decorated officer in Beverly Hills Police history.
¹²⁵
He recalled the above event with certainty.

Around midnight

A helicopter lands at Peter Lawford’s Santa Monica beach house. Investigator Billy Woodfield gained access to the flight logs of the helicopter company that Peter Lawford usually used, and the logs revealed a notation that a flight had been dispatched to Lawford’s Santa Monica home for a trip to the LA airport at “around midnight.” The flight records at Culver Field in Santa Monica showed a pickup of one passenger at the Lawford house and a trip taking that passenger to LA airport.
¹²⁶

12:00 AM or just after midnight

Housekeeper Murray states to police (initially), that at this time she noticed the light under the door again and knocks but gets no reply. She tells police she immediately telephoned Dr Ralph Greenson, Monroe’s psychiatrist.
¹²⁷

12:30 AM

Dr. Greenson states to police (initially), that at this time he arrives and tries to break open the locked bedroom door but fails. He states to police later that, he looks through the French windows outside and sees Monroe lying on the bed holding the telephone, apparently dead, so he breaks the glass to open the locked door and checks her. He calls Dr. Hyman Engelberg.
¹²⁸

Note that Eunice Murray later admits that Marilyn’s bedroom door was not locked that night.
¹²⁹

12:00- 12:30 AM

Peter Lawford contacts private investi-gator Fred Otash, a surveillance expert, and the two arrange to meet shortly at Otash’s office.
¹³⁰

1:00 AM

Peter Lawford is supposedly informed by attorney Mickey Rudin that Marilyn is dead.