The Murder of Marilyn Monroe (11 page)

Murray Leib’s widow Sylvia told Jay Margolis, “Murray knew an awful lot of movie people like Peter Graves. While he did not know any of the Kennedys, he did know the one who was married to one of the Kennedy girls who lived in Malibu. He was very well-known and acted as mediator for them. Peter Lawford. Murray knew him well. He had been in his house to either pick up patients or to take care of a patient. . . .

“Murray knew Howard Hughes because every time Howard Hughes had a party, somebody got hurt and Murray did all of those calls because he did keep his mouth shut. You never could get anything out of him. In fact, Howard Hughes wanted him to quit Schaefer and come work with him but it was like Schaefer pointed out to Murray, ‘You’ll become a slave if you do that’ and Murray said, ‘That is true.’ So he knew Howard Hughes because he had been called to that house so often. And he knew a lot of them mostly because he had made calls to their house . . . And that’s how he knew these people but Murray said he never knew Marilyn until he was on that call . . .

“One time, there was one truck in front of the house and one truck right around the corner, and I think a couple of cars behind that. This woman, the one that rang the bell, she introduced herself as a reporter for
20/20
and she had this huge bag over her shoulder like an oversized purse, and she just said that they were doing something about Marilyn Monroe.

“She said she wanted to interview Murray, and that was about the twentieth anniversary of her death. Murray said, ‘I don’t have anything to say to you and I want you to take your equipment and get off of my property, and if you don’t, I’m going to call the police.’ Murray never took a dime from them or from anybody else for any story.

“That was not his thing. He absolutely totally refused them. They offered Murray all the money in the world if he would be interviewed, but he refused them. That’s not what he did. No matter what they asked him about Marilyn, Murray said, ‘If you wanna know what I know, just read the police report. That’s all I know.’

“That’s why he did all the celebrity calls that came to Schaefer, if they could get a hold of Murray, unless he was away or something. Because this all happened before I met him. Those were always Murray’s calls because he would never ever tell anybody anything. He never spoke about them because he felt the job he had was very confidential.

“Murray was also an attendant to Clara Bow. He also knew Elizabeth Taylor’s husband Nicky Hilton. Schaefer ran that place and he used Murray for celebrities because he knew that nobody was going to get anything out of Murray and that he wasn’t going to take any money for anything. Murray said [regarding Marilyn Monroe], ‘Everybody made money on this story except me.’ He never believed that he should take anything or that he should betray any of these people that trusted him. He was like that . . .

“Murray was very well known in the industry because they all trusted him because they knew that their secrets were safe with him. You could never get anything out of him. He was very proud of his reputation with the celebrities. Marilyn has so much publicity and so many people were there and saw all of this, you couldn’t keep that a secret . . .

“It was not until a few years before he died that he told me about Marilyn but he always said that she was dead when they got there. She was gone . . . Murray said, ‘Nobody murdered her. Nobody killed her. It was just an overdose. There was an empty bottle and the place reeked of alcohol. I don’t know how much she drank.’ It was just a matter of routine what to do with her because she was a celebrity and he knew they had to tread carefully. The Kennedys were involved in it, too. She was in the middle of a real trauma then because the Kennedys had kicked her out that day. That particular coroner [Noguchi], you could get him to say anything. I remember him well.

“Murray said it was around midnight, I do know that. Eleven o’clock to them. You know, well, if you’re working, you don’t know if it’s eleven or twelve o’clock. He wasn’t a clock-watcher. I have an idea she was murdered because this girl had everything to live for but she had the Kennedys in her pocket and those people thought nothing of doing something like that. You know that by their history. But nobody should have influence enough to take over the press and take over the hospitals and doctors but to my knowledge, I never met this attendant [James Hall].”

Over the years, James Hall told of his run-ins with celebrities or those related to celebrities as an attendant for Schaefer Ambulance while he was working in the Santa Monica office. These included actor-comedian Ernie Kovacs, MGM’s costume designer Irene Gibbons, Sammy Davis, Jr.’s mother Elvera Sanchez, and even Barbara Burns, the daughter of comedian Bob Burns.

“Dr. George E. Hall, was a Beverly Hills surgeon and former chief of staff of Los Angeles receiving hospitals, the city’s emergency system,” Hall relayed. “My mother was a surgical nurse. A prominent member of my family was my uncle John Nance Garner, Vice President for two terms under Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Hall’s impressive family background is augmented by the fact that Dr. George E. Hall and Walt Schaefer were very good friends despite Schaefer later unconvincingly claiming in the 1980s that he knew neither James Hall nor his father.

“When Jim was fourteen-years-old, he was swinging on rings doing doubles and triples, you know, gymnastics, and he fell and broke his neck,” recalled Hall’s childhood best friend Mike Carlson. “Right from the back of his head right where your neck is all the way to the center of his back. They attached all these wires to his back and all. After that, he was walking kind of stiff. He was in the hospital for three years so he was very familiar with the practices associated with his family like his dad and what the process was. I would say he was very into his job.”

“In 1961 I started with Walt Schaefer’s California Ambulance Service,” James Hall explained. “Dad called Schaefer and got me the job. My dad would show and tell us a lot of little moves . . . like when you’re delivering a baby . . . how to push and all that type of stuff. It helped a lot.”

In fact, Dr. Hall’s advice would prove very useful the following year when Hall took the ambulance call for a famous actress-singer. “I picked up Betty Hutton,” Hall remembered. “When we entered her house, we were facing the couch, and her bedroom was down the hallway to the right. We took her from her home, and at that time she had a real long Italian name like a producer or something.”

James Hall is absolutely correct even down to the Italian last name. Hall said, “We took her to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, to the Pavilion. The only cases that went to the Pavilion were obstetrics or babies. They thought she was miscarrying, but she wasn’t. From what I understand, she later had a baby.”

On June 20, 1962, in the
El Paso Herald
, a story ran in Hollywood through the
United Press International
called “Betty Hutton Has Baby Girl.” It read: “Singer Betty Hutton yesterday gave birth to a seven-pound girl at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Attendants said both mother and daughter were ‘doing fine.’ It was the first child for Miss Hutton by her marriage to Musician Pete Candoli.” Indeed, Carolyn Candoli was born on June 19, 1962, less than two months before James Edwin Hall witnessed the murder of Marilyn Monroe by Dr. Ralph Greenson.
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Photographed by David Conover in 1947. (Getty Images)

Photographed on the set of
The Asphalt Jungle
in 1950. (Getty Images)

Photographed by Ed Clark in 1950. (Getty Images)

Photographed by Don Ornitz in 1951. (Getty Images)

Photographed by Earl Theisen in 1951. (Getty Images)

Photographed by Phil Burchman in 1951. (Getty Images)

Photographed by Nickolas Muray in 1952. (Getty Images)