The Murder of Marilyn Monroe (26 page)

Peter Lawford’s strange actions in front of his friends could be amply explained if he was trying to come up with an alibi. His best friend Joe Naar told Jay Margolis, “You’re trying to sort out the truth and put a puzzle together, but at this late date it’s going to be extremely difficult. So, how in the world are you
ever
going to find out the truth? I don’t know how you, in all good conscience, can do this. It’s so hard to put it all together. My own wife Dolores said it was not Sunday night, it was Saturday night. So, if we can differ on what night it was, then you can imagine what you’re up against. I mean, how is that possible, we don’t even know which night it was?”

Former FBI agent Bill Roemer believed neither Bobby Kennedy nor the Mafia had anything to do with Marilyn’s death. However, he answered in the affirmative to support the convening of a grand jury, “I would, yeah. I think there have been so many questions now and there’s so much conjecturing. It would be nice to put it all out in the open once and for all so there’d be no question to what exactly happened.”

Celebrated Italian psychologist Luciano Mecacci deduced, “Marilyn’s death was in the end a relief for everyone: for the Kennedys, who had been freed from the nightmare of a scandal; for the CIA and the FBI, who were reassured about a possible leak of secret material; and for Greenson, who had been released from a personal and professional commitment that was becoming too demanding.”

Fred Otash said the FBI and the CIA had bugged Marilyn’s house. Concerned about her “tell all” press conference, they wouldn’t miss Marilyn if she suddenly died. Certainly, J. Edgar Hoover was not a stupid man. FBI agent John Anderson reported back to him that Bobby Kennedy went inside Marilyn’s house alongside Case and Ahern shortly after 9:30 p.m. Before ten o’clock, Marilyn became embroiled in a physical struggle and that struggle was recorded via wiretap. It was then noted that Kennedy, Case, and Ahern left at 10:30. Through cause and effect, Hoover knew that the Kennedys were involved. What’s more, Bobby was fully aware that Hoover had knowledge about his participation in the murder of a movie star.

In the years to come, the FBI director would play games with Bobby Kennedy, always sticking it to him about Marilyn Monroe. On July 8, 1964, Hoover wrote to Bobby regarding Frank Capell’s soon-to-be-released
The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe
: “His book will make reference to your alleged friendship with the late Miss Marilyn Monroe. Mr. Capell stated that he will indicate in his book that you and Miss Monroe were intimate, and that you were in Miss Monroe’s home at the time of her death.”

“He said she was murdered,” Hoover’s teenage neighbor Anthony Calomaris told Anthony Summers decades later, “that it wasn’t a suicide, that the Kennedys were involved.” However, Hoover would never think of having Bobby arrested. It was not in his character. Instead, he blackmailed the Attorney General to secure his current position as head of the FBI, reminding Bobby who was really running the country. Besides, exposing the Kennedys in this scandal could destroy the belief the nation had in its own government during the pre-Watergate era. It would be inconceivable that Hoover would make such a move.

When Bobby Kennedy saw Marilyn Monroe on February 1, 1962, not knowing that the Lawford home was bugged by the FBI director, Marilyn told Bobby she knew Hoover was following her and she wondered when Bobby was going to fire him. Bobby said he wasn’t in a position to do so at the moment. Anthony Summers wrote, “For Edgar, reading the transcript in Washington, Kennedy’s words must have held some comfort. He now knew, for sure, from the mouth of one of the brothers, that the Kennedys were afraid to dismiss him—for the time being. That gave him all the more reason to go on watching to keep on piling up compromising information.”

In 1961, after disagreeing with J. Edgar Hoover at a function for the Justice Department, Ethel Kennedy “put an anonymous note in the FBI’s ‘suggestions’ box proposing that the Director be replaced by the Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker, whom Hoover loathed.” The potential for blackmail resolved the discrepancy of why Bobby Kennedy publicly expressed his gratitude toward Hoover, a man he was known to hate. On August 7, 1962, at the Seattle World’s Fair, Kennedy uncharacteristically supported J. Edgar Hoover in public and said something that must have made Parker cringe, “I hope Hoover will continue to serve the country for many, many years to come.”

On September 18, 1965, Bobby Kennedy attended a ceremonial line-up for Mickey Mantle at Yankee Stadium. Gay Talese of
Esquire
magazine wrote: “Mantle stepped forward. He stood with his wife and children, posed for the photographers kneeling in front. Then he thanked the crowd in a short speech and, turning, shook hands with the dignitaries standing nearby. Among them now was Senator Kennedy . . .”

Interestingly, Joe DiMaggio was also at the event attended by Robert Kennedy. “Kennedy posed with Mantle for a photographer, then shook hands with the Mantle children, and with Toots Shor and James Farley,” wrote Gay Talese. “DiMaggio saw him [Robert Kennedy] coming down the line and at the last second he backs away, casually . . . and Kennedy seemed not to notice it . . . just swept past shaking more hands . . .”

Not even a year later on July 16, 1966, Kennedy’s old friend Police Chief William Parker died of a heart attack while in attendance at a military dinner where he was a guest speaker.

According to Peter Lawford, Bobby Kennedy had “convinced” Ralph Greenson that Marilyn Monroe would also publicly reveal
his
affair with her. This was not true and therefore Bobby had successfully manipulated the psychiatrist for his own ends. Once Greenson realized this, it was too late and he had experienced firsthand what it was like to be used by one of the Kennedy brothers. This is why Lawford concluded that Greenson had been “set up” by Bobby to murder his star patient.

In fact, according to biographer C. David Heymann, Peter Lawford told him, “MM’s affair with Greenson took on a far greater meaning at the time of her death. Marilyn, as everyone later discovered, had threatened Bobby with the prospect of holding a press conference at which she planned to announce her assignations with both the President and the Attorney General.

“Such an admission would no doubt have resulted in a major scandal. Bobby, on hearing of Marilyn’s plans—and somehow knowing of her concomitant relationship with Greenson—called the good doctor and convinced him that his star patient also intended to disclose her romantic dealings with the psychiatrist.”

Robert Kennedy told Greenson, “Marilyn has got to be silenced.” Therefore, Lawford deduced, “Greenson had thus been set up by Bobby to ‘take care’ of Marilyn.”

Greenson had indeed been tricked into murdering Marilyn Monroe, and therefore his recorded reference to the Attorney General (“Talk to Bobby Kennedy”) was a bitter and illuminating remark. In fact, the psychiatrist wrote, “The ending at this particular time seemed so unfair and in a way unnecessary, and I feel that I have hurt my whole family with this since they all got to know her and cared about her . . . She was a Cinderella girl who did not live happily ever after.” Ralph Greenson conceded, “She was a poor creature, whom I tried to help and ending up hurting.”

As for the movie star’s last publicist, Pat Newcomb, Lawford told Heymann: “After Marilyn’s death, the Kennedys gave Pat a job in Washington and soon sent her off to Europe so the American press couldn’t get hold of her.”

Everyone deserves the right to due process of law and that right was not afforded to Marilyn Monroe in 1962. Now, more than a half-century has passed since her death and most of those involved are now deceased. So, the only justice that can be afforded Marilyn is to name her murderers: Robert Kennedy, Peter Lawford, and the man who finally ended her life, Dr. Ralph Greenson.

“I had become a prisoner now of a form of treatment which I thought was correct for her but almost impossible for me,” Ralph Greenson chillingly wrote to Dr. Marianne Kris more than two weeks after he murdered Marilyn Monroe. “I was her therapist, the good father who would not disappoint her and who would bring her insights, and if not insights, just kindness.”

Greenson felt an overwhelming responsibility by continuing to treat his star patient. He claimed he wanted to help her but that all his efforts were futile. The psychiatrist relayed, “She was making progress, but at times I felt I couldn’t go on with this, particularly since so often it became 6 or 7 days a week.”

In the months leading to her death, Marilyn Monroe became a source of incessant aggravation to Ralph Greenson and his massive ego. “I had become the most important person in her life and there was nothing I could do except hope that as she improved still more she would become more independent,” the doctor explained. “I also felt guilty that I put a burden on my own family.”

The most famous woman in the world had many plans for the future. She didn’t like being typecast into the same role. “I’m tired of playing sex kittens,” said Marilyn Monroe. “I want roles that I can get my teeth into—roles that enable me to show a side of myself which appeals to an intelligent public . . . But sex is not enough . . . If I stick with the sex bit who will be paying to see me when I’m fifty?”

In her second-to-last interview with
Life
magazine, in July 1962, Marilyn Monroe told Richard Meryman: “I never quite understood it—this sex symbol—I always thought symbols were those things you clash together! That’s the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. But if I’m going to be a symbol of something I’d rather have it sex than some other things they’ve got symbols of!” Not only was she “the symbol of the eternal feminine,” as acting coach Lee Strasberg eulogized about Marilyn at her funeral, she was a human being. May she finally rest in peace.
⁴³

POSTSCRIPT CASE CONFIRMED: THE SECOND AND THIRD SHOOTERS IN THE ROBERT KENNEDY ASSASSINATION

On June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy was shot twice by a second shooter and fatally wounded by a third shooter, all within five and a half seconds (12:15:59–12:16:04). Talking with investigative reporter Dan Moldea, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who performed the autopsy on the Senator, mentioned the order of the shots fired at Robert Kennedy, all of which were from back-to-front: “The [rear of the right] shoulder pad shot as he was raising his arm [which didn’t actually hit Kennedy], the two shots to his right armpit, in which one of the bullets lodged in the back of his neck, and, lastly, the shot to the mastoid [where a large part of the bullet fragmented and lodged in his brain]. This was the shot that was fatal. In other words, the [two] nonfatal wounds first and then the fatal wound.”

Eyewitness Don Schulman, a KNXT-TV employee, stated he was in the crowd behind RFK at the time of the shooting and said he saw someone dressed as an Ace Security guard “standing directly to the side and back of Kennedy,” Schulman told investigative reporter Ted Charach in 1971. “He was standing on the right-hand side.”

In fact, immediately after the shooting, Schulman first relayed his account of what he saw to Jeff Brent of the Continental News Service who broadcasted his account over the radio. Minutes after that, KNXT news anchor Jerry Dunphy reported on television while Sirhan Sirhan was
still
at the Ambassador Hotel that “Don Schulman of KNXT tells us that Kennedy was shot three times . . .”

As noted in the FBI files on the RFK assassination, Schulman is adamant that he saw “Kennedy being shot three times. The guard definitely pulled out his gun and fired.” To Ted Charach, Schulman said Sirhan Sirhan was “from three to six feet” from Kennedy during the shooting and facing the Senator, not behind him.

“That bullet which killed Kennedy, it was an inch away from his head,” stated Karl Uecker, the hotel assistant maître d’ who grabbed Sirhan’s gun arm after Sirhan’s second shot. “This bullet [an inch away] didn’t come from Sirhan. Did not come from Sirhan because he never got that close.”

“One was Sirhan Sirhan and the other one was the security guard,” Don Schulman told Jay Margolis asserting that he witnessed two shooters nearly sixteen minutes after midnight, while at the same time confirming that Kennedy had been shot three times. “I was standing by the doorway. The cameramen had been standing there for quite some time, holding the camera, and they wanted me to signal them when the crowd was moving. They heard Kennedy was going to stop by the kitchen and thank some people. As he left, after his speech, I got shoved in with a lot of other people. All of a sudden, Sirhan was the man who jumped out and yelled obscenities at Kennedy and shot at him while the guard next to Kennedy pulled his gun and fired. I went out and the first person I saw was reporter Jeff Brent who interviewed me for Continental Radio about ten to twelve minutes after the shooting . . . I was interviewed by a lot of people. I saw what I saw. The security guard shot Kennedy. He disappeared for quite some time.”

Schulman was absolutely correct that Kennedy was indeed shot three times as autopsy surgeon Dr. Thomas Noguchi later confirmed early the next morning after the Senator was pronounced dead.

Twenty-eight-year old Irene Gizzi, a Youth for Kennedy chairman in Panorama City, was there at the Ambassador Hotel. According to Ms. Gizzi, Jay Margolis is the first person to interview her since a police lieutenant arrived at her home on June 6, 1968. During the shooting, she said she was in the lower ballroom known as the Ambassador Room, not in the pantry and not in the upper ballroom, which is the Embassy Room [both upstairs]. “First, Robert was speaking in the upper ballroom,” asserted Irene Gizzi to Jay Margolis. “Then he was going to come down into the lower ballroom and speak.” However investigative reporter Shane O’Sullivan importantly noted a last minute change: “After the speech [in the Embassy Room] . . . Kennedy didn’t go downstairs to the Ambassador Room . . . He was ushered through the back of the platform by [Karl] Uecker and led . . . into the backstage hallway . . . He was led to his right . . . into the pantry, en route to an impromptu press conference in the Colonial Room.”