Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups (25 page)

M
ONROE'S LOVE AFFAIRS
Rumours about what had been going on in Monroe's life before she died abounded, and it was only a matter of time before several competing conspiracy theories began to surface. Most of them centred on her involvement with the President. According to these accounts, Monroe had been having an affair with John F. Kennedy and had threatened to go public on the subject, which would have destroyed Kennedy's political career. Clearly, in those circumstances, the President would have had every reason to have her silenced.

No one suggested that J.F. Kennedy had actually killed Marilyn Monroe with his own hands, so the next step was to determine the identity of the killer. Some named the President's brother, Robert Kennedy. Various witnesses claimed to have seen him visit Monroe during the course of the fatal evening. Could he have gone to plead his brother's case and then – when she refused to stay silent – did he resort to killing her?

Another theory also claims that Robert Kennedy murdered Monroe but that he did not commit the act on his brother's behalf but his own, because he too was having an affair with Monroe. This theory suffers from a lack of evidence and some argue that, even if the two had been lovers, there would have been less for Robert to lose if Marilyn had decided to go public and reveal the liaison.

M
AFIA MEN
It was then suggested that the murderer was a hireling of gangster Sam Giancana. According to this theory, Kennedy had turned to his Mafia boss friend for help in the delicate situation he found himself in. Giancana then gladly agreed to send his henchmen in to deal with Monroe. In return, Kennedy was to assist Giancana with projects that were dear to the Mafia's heart, such as the overthrow of Fidel Castro.

As with Robert Kennedy, there were those who suspected that Giancana could have carried out the murder on his own behalf, in a bid to silence Monroe because they had been having an affair. However, as many have pointed out, if it had been revealed that a mobster had been having an affair with Marilyn Monroe it could only have enhanced his reputation!

Since Monroe's death, the many conspiracy theories that have been advanced have mostly been met with scepticism. Most people are reluctant to believe that the President of the United States, or his brother, could have murdered a legendary movie star in order to protect their reputations. However, it does seem that in the case of Monroe's death – as in the case of the assassination of Kennedy himself – there are plenty of disturbing facts and questions that still need to be answered. Reputable Monroe biographers such as Anthony Summers and Donald Spoto have tended to steer a middle course, suggesting that her death was neither a deliberate murder nor an innocent suicide, but something rather more complex than that.

A
N ACCIDENTAL OVERDOSE?
It is possible that Monroe's death was the result of an accidental overdose. She had been taking a great many prescription drugs at the time. Her preferred drug administration method was by enema. So it is possible that she received the fatal overdose in this form, perhaps administered by her housekeeper, Eunice Murray. This would explain the fact that there were few drugs in her bloodstream after her death. However, it seems unlikely that anyone would choose to murder her in this way.

The most plausible scenario seems to be that Monroe was indeed having an affair with the President, but was devastated when he broke the affair off and committed suicide as a reaction. Then, whoever discovered her dead body – whether it was her housekeeper or Robert Kennedy – panicked, moved things around in the room and delayed calling the authorities. Not a murder, then, but a scandal and a cover-up.

Finally, though, this is one of those cases where it seems unlikely that things will ever be conclusively proven either way. Suicide or murder? The choice is yours – and there are plenty of accounts.

At the time of his assassination on 21 February 1965, Malcolm X was one of the two leading black political figures in America. The other was Martin Luther King, who was himself assassinated just a couple of years later. However, where Martin Luther King was a broadly popular figure, a man of the church with a commitment to non-violent change, Malcolm was seen as a much more threatening figure. White liberals hailed Martin Luther King as the leader of the civil rights movement. On the other hand, Malcolm X was treated with suspicion because he was the main spokesman for a group called the Nation of Islam – commonly known as the Black Muslims – who were overtly anti-white and rather less inclined to turn the other cheek.

During the early sixties, Malcolm, a former petty criminal who had discovered the Nation Of Islam while in prison, became a hate figure in the mainstream American media and was routinely vilified for his anti-white statements.

During the last year of his life, however, he began to travel more, especially to Africa, and after meeting anti-apartheid activists in South Africa he became convinced that black and white people could work together to achieve political change. This realization caused him to split with the Nation Of Islam and during the summer of 1964 he formed his own group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

Shortly after forming this organization Malcolm X returned to Africa for a period of several months, finally returning to the United States in November 1964. While he was in Africa he continually complained that he was being followed by CIA agents. In Cairo he was seriously ill, perhaps as the result of having his food poisoned. Things were no better when he returned to the United States. Over the next few months a feud developed between Malcolm and the Nation Of Islam, the group he had resigned from. Death threats were issued against him.

H
OUSE FIREBOMBED
A week before his eventual assassination Malcolm's house in Queens, New York was firebombed. At the time Malcolm assumed that the Nation Of Islam was behind the attack. The following day, 15 February, Malcolm made a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. As he spoke a scuffle broke out in the audience. Six days later Malcolm returned to the Audubon. Mysteriously, all the other speakers that were scheduled to appear cancelled their engagements. While Malcolm was waiting to speak he allegedly confided to friends in the backstage area that he was not sure that it had been the Nation Of Islam after all that had been behind the firebombing. Then he went onstage and began to give his speech.

At around 3.05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time a disturbance broke out in the crowd of 400. A man yelled, "Get your hand outta my pocket! Don't be messin' with my pockets!" Then a smoke bomb went off at the back of the auditorium causing confusion. Malcolm's bodyguards moved forward to calm the crowd but meanwhile, taking advantage of the chaos, a black man came towards the stage and shot Malcolm in the chest at point-blank range with a sawn-off shotgun. Two other men quickly charged towards the stage and fired handguns at Malcolm. The three assassins attempted to escape, but the angry crowd managed to capture one of the two men with handguns, one Talmadge Hayer.

Malcolm's bodyguard Gene Roberts, actually an undercover cop, attempted to resuscitate Malcolm but to no avail. Malcolm was dead. The autopsy was performed by New York City's Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Milton Helpern, and it was discovered that "the cause of death was multiple shotgun pellet and bullet wounds in the chest, heart and aorta". Malcolm had been hit by eight shotgun slugs and nine bullets.

Malcolm's funeral was held in Harlem on 27 February 1965 at the Faith Temple Church of God in Christ (now Child's Memorial Temple Church of God in Christ). The ceremony was attended by 1,500 people. Malcolm X was buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, where his friends took the shovels away from the waiting gravediggers and buried him themselves. Soon, three people were arrested for his murder. They were Nation of Islam members Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler, and Thomas 15X Johnson. All three were convicted of first-degree murder in March 1966.

On the face of it, this was an open and shut case, the result of infighting between black radicals. The Nation Of Islam had murdered their greatest ex-member. The mainstream media either said good riddance or shed crocodile tears. And moved on. Gradually, though, suspicions began to circulate that all may not have been as it seemed.

A
COVER-UP?
Suspicion centred around the notion that Malcolm might have been murdered by his fellow black men who had been manipulated: they could have believed that they were carrying out the wishes of the Nation of Islam.

It was not hard to find fuel for those suspicions. Even in the immediate aftermath of the murder a police source had told the Herald Tribune that "several" members of the highly secretive Bureau of Special Services (BOSS) were present in the audience at the time of the killing. One of those undercover cops, Gene Roberts, was one of Malcolm X's bodyguards at the time he was killed.

On 25 February 1965, four days after the assassination of Malcolm X, one of his senior lieutenants at the OAAU, Leon 4X Ameer, announced that he was convinced that his life was in danger. Less than three weeks later, he died of an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. It is alleged that he had been on the point of revealing evidence of government involvement in Malcolm's murder.

Further speculation surrounds the question of who really carried out the killing. Talmadge Hayer was certainly guilty, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that his co-defendants were not even at the Audubon Ballroom at the time, and that the two other killers have never been brought to justice. As for Talmadge Hayer, he has stated that he was not a member of the Nation of Islam and "that the man who hired him was not a Muslim" either, according to a 1971 book, The Assassination of Malcolm X.

So was it the government or the Nation Of Islam that was really behind the murder. There is a suspicion of government involvement here, and it is probably true to say that few people at the FBI shed many tears for Malcolm X. On the other hand, the Nation of Islam was locked in a struggle with Malcolm and its leading lights like Elijah Muhammad, and his eventual successor Louis Farrakhan did publicly call for Malcolm's elimination. It might well be that both parties are implicated. Perhaps the killers were Black Muslims and they were egged on by agents provocateurs. Whatever the truth behind the killing, the inescapable fact is that another great sixties leader was cut down in his prime, like John F. Kennedy before him and Martin Luther King not long afterwards.

In the early hours of Sunday, 31 August 1997, news of the death of Princess Diana shocked the world. She and her lover Dodi Al-Fayed had been killed in a car crash as they sped through a Paris tunnel during the night. The driver of the car, Henri Paul, was also killed and Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees Jones, was seriously injured.

At first, the cause of the accident seemed straightforward enough. In an attempt to shake off the paparazzi who were pursuing the couple on motorcycles, the driver had taken the car down into the tunnel just a little too fast and had ended up smacking into one of the pillars inside it. But then, questions began to be asked. Why was the car travelling so fast? Had Henri Paul been drinking? If so, why had he been allowed to drive the car of Britain's number one celebrity, Princess Diana, whose doomed marriage to the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, had generated pages of speculation and scandal in the worldwide press for over a decade. Why had the lights in the tunnel, and the security cameras, apparently failed just before the crash? Why had it taken so long for Princess Diana, who was still alive after the crash, to be taken to hospital by ambulance?