Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (17 page)

This, again, smacks of cover-up. As we can see in the previous post, Lawford was already well aware that Marilyn was dead and was already busy covering tracks.

1:00 AM

A neighbor of Marilyn’s, Abe Landau, arrives home and notices a lot of cars and activity at Marilyn’s house. Landau states that he asked what was happening, and he was told that Marilyn had died.
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1:30 AM

Attorney Milt Ebbins speaks on the phone to Peter Lawford.
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2:00 AM

Peter Lawford meets private investigator Fred Otash at Otash’s office as the two had arranged in the earlier call. Lawford explains that Marilyn is dead, and that Robert Kennedy had been at the house, so there is an urgent need to get over to her home and “sweep” it of all listening devices, as well as making sure that there is nothing in the home linking her to the Kennedys. Otash had apparently wiretapped Marilyn’s house and knew she was under surveillance. Lawford’s wife (Patty Seaton Lawford) also verified that Lawford had gone to see Otash right after Marilyn’s death. Otash verified that the tapes revealed that Robert Kennedy had been at the house that day. Two other witnesses also heard the tape and confirm that.
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3:00 AM

Ebbins calls Peter Lawford to talk to him again but this time there is no answer at Lawford’s home.
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Early AM hours

Surveillance expert Fred Otash, acting on instructions received via Peter Law- ford, arrives at Marilyn’s home and checks and removes the listening devices from it.
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Early AM hours

Men described as “Federal Agents” arrive at the Santa Monica headquarters of the General Telephone Company and, even though it is after hours, demand, receive and seize the telephone records of Marilyn Monroe.
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3:50 AM

Dr. Engleberg, Marilyn’s real doctor (remember that Greenson is simply her psychiatrist) states that he gets a phone call at 3:50 a.m., informing him that Marilyn is dead, so he heads over to the house right before the police are called.
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4:00 AM

Ebbins states that he gets a call from attorney Mickey Rudin who tells him “I’m at Marilyn’s house now and she’s dead.”
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4:00 AM

Pat Newcomb gets a wake-up call from Mickey Rudin, who tells her he is at Marilyn’s house and that Marilyn is dead. Pat throws a jacket over her pajamas and heads over to Marilyn’s house. A bit later, around dawn, she is caught screaming viciously at the reporters who hover just outside Marilyn’s driveway: “Vultures! Are you happy now? ... Vultures”
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4:25 AM

Police are finally called. Dr. Greenson places the call from Marilyn’s home and it is received by Sgt. Clemmons, Night Watch Commander at the West Los Angeles Police Station. (By some accounts, the phone call is placed by Dr. Engleberg. In any event, one of her doctors calls the police, and both doctors are present when Sgt. Clemmons arrives). Sgt Clemmons verifies the death and then heads over to Marilyn’s house personally.
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Shortly after 4:30 AM

Police arrive. Housekeeper Eunice and the two doctors are questioned, and they initially indicate a time of death of around 12:30 a.m. Police note the room is extremely tidy, and that the bed appears to have fresh linen on it. The police note that Murray was washing sheets when they arrived. Police also note that the bedside table has several pill bottles but the room contains no means to wash pills down as there is no glass and, furthermore, that the water is turned off due to remodeling. Later, a glass or other type of drinking vessel is found lying on the floor by the bed, but a police officer who was present states that it was not there previously when the room was thoroughly searched and that a glass was one of the items they were specifically looking for.
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5:40 AM

The undertaker, Guy Hockett, arrives and notes that Marilyn is in an advanced state of rigor mortis, and that the state of rigor mortis indicates a time of death between 9:30 and 11:30 p.m. However, the time is
later altered to match the witness statements.
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6:00 AM

Eunice changes her story to police and now says she went back to bed at midnight and only called Dr. Green- son when she awoke at 3:00 a.m. and noticed that the light was still on.

Both doctors also change their stories and now claim Monroe died around 3:50 AM (for the obvious purpose of closing up all the missing hours before police were called). Police note that Eunice Murray appears quite evasive and extremely vague—she would eventually change her story several more times. Despite being a key witness, Murray travels to Europe and is not questioned again. Since there is not a Coroner’s Inquest or any official criminal investigation, the witnesses
are not required to testify
under oath.
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6:04 AM

Peter Lawford calls President Kennedy (verified by White House phone log). The White House operator patches the call through to Hyannis Port, Massaa- chusetts, where the President is spending the weekend, and the call lasts for a little bit over 20 minutes.
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August 6, 1962

One day after Marilyn’s death is made public, Attorney General Robert Kennedy announces that J. Edgar Hoover has been doing a great job as FBI Director and will be kept on in that position even though he is past the age of mandatory requirement. This is nothing less than a
complete reversal
of an established goal of the Kennedy Administration, which was to force Hoover out and replace his important position with a true Kennedy ally. Hoover was bitter enemies with the Kennedy brothers (with Robert Kennedy in particular—it was a known fact that the two men despised each other, both personally and professionally). Bobby and his Justice Department were literally at war with the Mob, while Hoover was still officially denying that the Mafia even existed. So Bobby had been pushing JFK to fire him, and it was considered evident that Hoover’s days were numbered (and a low number, at that). Even Bobby’s statement is seething with ridicule, if one examines it closely: “the FBI Director has done an outstanding job of controlling the Communist Party in the United States, and I hope he will serve the country for many, many years to come.”
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(Bobby openly considered the “threat” of Communists in the U.S. to be little more than a joke at this point, designed in part for the purpose of shielding the truer threats to security). The fact that Robert Kennedy makes such a dramatic reversal one day after the death announcement is indicative of dramatic goings-on behind the scenes. Marilyn’s home was bugged, her phones were tapped and she was being followed under extensive surveillance by the FBI. Therefore, Hoover obviously had access to that info (he had ordered it) and would have known that Robert Kennedy was at her home on the day of her death. The obvious inference is that a secret accord was reached to accede to Hoover’s wish to continue as Director, in exchange for his cooperation in the cover-up, especially in relation to Robert Kennedy’s presence in Los Angeles that day. Politics isn’t pretty. There are actually 18 credible citings of Robert Kennedy being in L.A. that day—he may have had witnesses who swore that he never left Northern California on August 4--but he was in L.A. However, it bears noting, that Robert Kennedy’s presence there in no way implies his involvement in Marilyn’s death—if anything, quite the contrary. If Robert Kennedy would have had any indication there would be violence at Marilyn’s home, he would not have even set foot in the state of California, let alone be at her house. Therefore, it appears she was killed for the very reason of implicating him by his presence there (just as Hoover had warned), in an effort to smear the Kennedy brothers with a public the Kennedy brothers with a public scandal that would ruin them politically (which, in the context of 1962 America, was a very realistic expectation). The “cover-up” which followed, appears to be a very clear effort to foil that attempt by the swift and almost surgical removal of any and all links to the Kennedy brothers at Marilyn’s home by LAPD, with full cov-erage (especially on phone records) by the FBI and Justice Department, and the accompanying emergency exit—getting the Attorney General out of L.A. in the tumultuous hours after her murder.
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However, bear in mind that, as we noted in our introduction, those who cover up a crime are not necessarily the ones who commit it. Cover-ups occur for any number of reasons, often under the guise (and protection) of “National Security.” And if the White House is compromised, that
is
National Security.

Furthermore, the Kennedy brothers were clearly
not
in the habit of murdering girlfriends to keep them quiet. There is no precedent in their highly detailed histories to suggest anything close to resorting to murder as a means of “damage control.” As Attorney General and President of the United States, they had much more effective means at their disposal and there is every indication that they utilized those means thoroughly and successfully. Every bit of evidence linking Marilyn to a romantic affair or sexual liaison with President Kennedy suddenly vanished off the face of the earth in the immediate aftermath of Marilyn’s death. And, in the context of 1962 America, there were very prescient reasons to make sure that it did.

Press coverage documents the fact that Bobby Kennedy arrived in San Francisco with his wife and four of their children on Friday afternoon, August 3, 1962. They were visiting friends for the weekend at the ranch of the Bates family in Gilroy, about 50 miles south of San Francisco International Airport.

“But in the process of his Mon roe investigation, LAPD Captain Thad Brown discovered something quite startling: the Attorney General had been in Los Angeles on Saturday, August 4
^th
”
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But you can cover a lot of ground when you’re Attorney General of the United States and have the entire Department of Justice, including the FBI, following your direction.

“Further evidence uncovered by Summers suggests that as soon as Monroe died, RFK persuaded J. Edgar Hoover to save him from scandal by obliterating all evidence— such as telephone company records linking him to Monroe. Summers mentions that LAPD Chief of Detectives Thad Brown knew of the affair and notes that speculation in the newspapers that LAPD Chief William H. Parker had kept RFK’s name out of the investigation into Monroe’s death “to curry favor with the Kennedys.” Summers also suspects that LAPD officers helped private detectives hired by RFK to obscure the senator’s links to Monroe. In 1975, the LAPD conducted a reinquiry into Monroe’s death under the supervision of Daryl Gates, who refused to make the investigative files public.”
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