The Murder of Marilyn Monroe (7 page)

When interviewed by Donald Wolfe, James Hall said that, back in 1962, he worked a twenty-four-hour shift, which is why he probably couldn’t remember the time of his arrival at the Monroe home. Hall’s childhood best friend Mike Carlson explained, “Jim was working nearly twenty-four hours a day. They had a lot of people and a lot of drivers . . . People come. People go. You have multiple ambulances. It was like a firehouse.”

What’s more, the principals at the scene had waited more than four-and-a-half hours to call the police. When Anthony Summers interviewed the two Schaefer employees mentioned by Hall to Mike Carroll—Joe Tarnowski and Tom Fears—they both confirmed that an ambulance from their company had been dispatched to the Monroe residence that night. Now, when Hall called the District Attorney’s Office a second time, Carroll put him in touch with his investigator Alan B. Tomich. Hall subsequently told Tomich what he had witnessed following his arrival at the Monroe residence:

As James Hall explained to Tomich, in exchange for his testimony there would be “no financial transaction until I take your polygraph to prove what I’m saying is true. At that time, you would pay right there on the spot when it’s proved to be true . . . That thing happened twenty years ago. It’s a long time. Now I gave you information on the phone that nobody has that you can check out and prove. I’m not just doing it because I’m Joe Goodguy. I’m doing it because of the economy and what’s happened financially.” When Tomich told Hall he wouldn’t pay him beyond the initial expenses, Hall said that was fine. He would simply go to the tabloids, allowing them to give him their own polygraph tests. Tomich chuckled, “Well, then, we’d be getting our information for free, wouldn’t we?”

On November 23, 1982, just weeks before the District Attorney’s Office concluded its renewed investigation into Marilyn Monroe’s death, John Blackburn, Chuck Orman, and Dan McDonald of the
Globe
newspaper publicly released James Hall’s account for the first time.
Globe
had paid Hall $40,000 after hypnosis by a professional experienced in police investigations had enabled the former ambulance attendant to recall more details about Marilyn Monroe’s murder at the hands of Dr. Ralph Greenson.

In the
Globe
article, Blackburn wrote, “Private investigator John Harrison . . . had been conducting polygraph examinations for 40 years.” Harrison told the
Globe
, “When I was first brought into this, I thought the whole thing was a fairytale, but now I’m thoroughly convinced Hall is telling a true story. He was given a total of six polygraph tests, including control tests, and there was no evidence of any deception.”

Blackburn continued, “Hall was interviewed while under hypnosis by Henry Koder, a professional forensic hypnotist with more than 20 years of law-enforcement experience and veteran of hundreds of major crime investigations.” Koder told the
Globe
, “Hall was a good subject. I was able to take him back to the night of Marilyn Monroe’s death under hypnosis and listened to his step-by-step description of his involvement. He was able to vividly recall that night and pointed out details to me that he hadn’t even remembered in earlier questioning. When wakened, Hall was able to give us a very thorough description of the injection doctor for our Identikit composite. Also, I implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion that Hall must be truthful. It would have been impossible for him to lie during the next polygraph without the machine showing a reaction.”

The doctor Hall identified in his Identikit composite looked like Marilyn’s psychiatrist and Greenson did have a mustache. Hall said the man referred to himself as “her doctor.” Engelberg, Marilyn’s other doctor, certainly didn’t have a mustache.

In addition, Donald Wolfe interviewed polygraph examiner Donald E. Fraser, who subjected James Hall to further tests on August 10, 1992. “There’s no question that James Hall is telling the truth,” Fraser concluded. “His story regarding the scene and circumstances of Miss Monroe’s death is absolutely true. He passed every question in several exhaustive polygraph examinations.”

The October 1993 issue of fan newspaper
Runnin’ Wild: All About Marilyn
featured a Donald Wolfe article titled “The Ambulance Chase.” Fraser told Wolfe that one of the questions posed to Hall was, “Did you witness a man who claimed to be Marilyn Monroe’s doctor give her an injection into the left side of her chest?” Wolfe wrote, “Lack of line movement indicates Hall was being truthful.” In fact, the fan newspaper reproduced the actual polygraph test given to James Hall by Don Fraser in 1992. “His story and the conversation produced during the polygraph examination would hold up in court,” Fraser asserted.

Dr. Greenson’s son Danny relayed to James Spada, “I hate all this speculation and especially that guy who says he saw my father plunge a needle into Marilyn’s heart. That’s ridiculous and I’ve got to say that it hurts me.” Greenson’s wife Hildi told Cathy Griffin, “I sometimes have a feeling that this ambulance driver went on a call that night somewhere else and kind of managed to get these things into a different order.”

In August, September, and October 1997, James Hall told biographer Michelle Morgan in detail his account of what took place at the Monroe home while he was there. She asked, “The day after Marilyn’s death, did you tell anyone what you had seen? If so, what was their reaction?” Hall replied, “I told everyone I knew and everyone who showed even a casual curiosity. Their reaction was mostly one of shock and they all asked, ‘What happened?’” Importantly, Hall was asked, “At this point, did you believe that you had seen Marilyn being murdered or did you think that the doctor had tried to help her?” Hall said, “At that time, I believed that Dr. Greenson was trying to help her with an injection of adrenaline.”

“Was it definitely Dr. Greenson at Marilyn’s house that night? Could it have possibly been someone else?”

“It was definitely Dr. Greenson at Marilyn’s house.”

In 1986, James Hall stated, “I thought that a doctor had futilely given her adrenaline, a standard procedure, and that she simply expired. So until 1982 I believed that Marilyn Monroe had OD’d . . . The hysterical woman [Pat Newcomb] said it was a possible overdose. A guy [Ralph Greenson] injected her in the heart; I figured it was adrenaline.”

On December 19, 2011, and February 3, 2012, Jay Margolis interviewed Mike Carlson who had been James Hall’s best friend since he was twelve years old. Asked when Hall had told him about Dr. Greenson and the heart needle, Carlson replied, “Days or weeks right after it happened. Jim always talked about the injustice of it all . . . He had no reason to tell me a story. As time went on, he’d say, ‘Nobody’ll listen to me.’ Then the whole attitude changed. They said pills were laying everywhere. He said there were no pills scattered anywhere when he was there. Jim was in a different room [the guest cottage].

“Another thing he said was that his father Dr. George Hall would go around to the home of celebrities but he would never ever, ever carry a needle with a syringe attached to it ever. That’s just not practiced. But this doctor [Ralph Greenson] pulled his syringe out of his caché case with a needle attached and plunged it into her. You just don’t do that unless you have some preconceived notion. Jim talked to his father about it. They went back and forth about it and his father said there’s no way that anyone would ever, ever do that. It’s against protocol.”

When queried whether Hall had informed him the solution in Greenson’s syringe had been brown, Carlson said, “That’s what he told me. Jim could tell you in volumes about it . . . His father was a very famous surgeon—Dr. George Hall practiced in the Los Angeles area. He was a very talented surgeon and he had a prominent position. He at one time worked for County General Hospital and had a private practice as well. . . .

“Dr. Hall said to me on one occasion, ‘I’m a surgeon. People come up to me and say, “I’ve got a headache.” I say, “Where does it hurt?” “Right there.” So I took a grease marker and marked where it hurt him. I say, “If you want me to find out where the problem is, I’ll do it.” ’ And the way Dr. Hall does it is he fires up a little electric wheel and runs it up against your scalp. He says, ‘I’m not a shrink. I don’t make any money for counseling. You come to me, we cut . . .’

“Dr. Hall and Walt Schaefer were very good friends. Schaefer Ambulance wanted to have a doctor on staff and Walt Schaefer knew Dr. Hall. Schaefer wanted to go into business with him and Dr. Hall declined. Years later, Jim’s father kicked himself and had wished he’d gone with Schaefer because Schaefer had done so well. Schaefer Ambulance had become the predominant ambulance company in Los Angeles.”
⁸

HALL, LIEBOWITZ, LAWFORD, NEWCOMB, AND IANNONE WITNESSED A MURDER NOT AN ADRENALINE SHOT

There were five witnesses to Marilyn Monroe’s murder. Three of the five state that Ralph Greenson was responsible. Two of those witnesses, Kennedy loyalists Pat Newcomb and Sgt. Marvin Iannone have consistently refused to go into accurate detail about that night’s events. Before Dr. Greenson interrupted Hall and Liebowitz’s attempts to revive Marilyn, James Hall observed, “She was naked. She had no sheet, no blanket . . . There was no water glass. No alcohol . . . We ascertained that her breathing was very shallow, her pulse was very weak and rapid and she was unconscious at that time.”

When James Hall arrived in the guest cottage, he saw the same bedside table that was delivered just hours earlier in the morning. Mrs. Murray wrote in her book, “Sometime during the earlier part of the day, the bedside table [for the guest cottage] was delivered and Marilyn wrote a check for it.”

Intriguingly, when Hall looked at Marilyn’s stomach when he arrived on the scene, he said, “I remember noticing she had a fairly fresh scar there.” In fact, on June 29, 1961, Marilyn had her gall bladder removed and the scar that remained was clearly captured in photographs by Bert Stern the last year of her life.

James Hall relayed to Michelle Morgan in September 1997, “No one ever said that Marilyn was in the guest bedroom except myself until now. Just recently, Murray Liebowitz in an interview with the author [Donald Wolfe] of a forthcoming book [
The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe
] admitted that he was with me at Marilyn’s house that night and that everything I had said was the truth as to what happened.

“I believe Marilyn was moved [from the guest cottage to her main bedroom] as to fit their story of suicide. Also, she was found facedown on her bed. After death the blood in the body goes to the lowest point by gravity. In this position, the pooling of the blood would cover up any marks (needle or otherwise) on the front of the body . . . As some of my credentials, I would like to offer the following. I have had 14 polygraphs done by the best in the world to include six charts—two sessions—by John Harrison. He said that he had administered at least 200,000 tests up to that time. All of the various polygraph experts say the same thing, that I am telling the truth.

“When I was interviewed by Anthony Summers, author of
Goddess
, I told him that I entered Marilyn’s house and turned left into a small bedroom. He said, ‘No, you turned right.’ I said, ‘I know that I turned left.’ He asked, ‘Did you see the pool?’ I answered, ‘No.’ If you go into the house by way of the front door, you must turn right to access Marilyn’s bedroom and, if coming in from the pool, you must turn left to access Marilyn’s bedroom. Tony thought the house was the same as it was in 1962. The new owners of the house, after Marilyn, remodeled it. They added a door from the guest house into the kitchen and gutted the guest bedroom and made it a photographic studio.” James Hall continued to Michelle Morgan:

I am a big fan of Marilyn. I have been a fan since I was a young man—just after I first saw her in the film
The Seven Year Itch
. I was an ambulance driver for Schaefer’s Ambulance Service stationed in Santa Monica, California. This office serviced the West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Westwood, Brentwood, and Santa Monica areas primarily. But we covered all of the Los Angeles basin as needed.

We were just coming in from a run when we got the call. My partner that night was Murray Liebowitz. “Car 82, 12305 5th Helena. Possible overdose. Private emergency. Handle your call, Code Three,” the radio blurted out. The address took us to Brentwood. When we got the call, we were close and able to respond in under two minutes.

Just in the short drive I could see a woman running around a little patch of grass before a bungalow. She wore a white nightgown with some kind of robe over it. Her arms flailed the air with frantic signals as she spotted my lights. “She’s dead! She’s dead!” she started screaming. That woman was Pat Newcomb, Marilyn’s publicist and friend.