Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (15 page)

7:40 PM

Marilyn phones Dr. Greenson, who has already arrived at his home and is now shaving because he is getting ready to go out to dinner with his wife. Marilyn informs him of the good news that Joe Jr. has broken off his wedding engagement and Greenson welcomes her enthusiasm. Later during the call, Marilyn asks Dr. Greenson if he took her Nembutal and he answers that no, he hasn’t. Dr. Greenson is a bit taken aback by the question, but recalls being relieved by the fact that Marilyn obviously didn’t have any Nembutal at the house. Greenson says Marilyn sounded “quite pleasant and more cheerful.”
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Note that Marilyn does have access to at least two bottles of Librium, a potent tranquilizer that she has been prescribed—she does not take any (there was no Librium in her body at autopsy). The following morning, the two bottles of Librium are found on the table near her body: one contained twenty-seven capsules, the other contained seventeen.

7:45 PM

Marilyn says goodnight to Mrs. Murray and tells her that she is retiring early. She is still in an excellent mood (two hours later, she is dead). As was her regular custom, she takes the telephone from its table in the guest room and brings it with her into her bedroom, closing her door with the phone cord beneath the door. Typically, she later replaces the telephone in the guest room as part of her nightly ritual, at the point when she is ready to go to sleep—as Eunice later puts it, “Putting the phones to bed was one of Marilyn’s nightly habits.”
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Before going to sleep, she would return the telephone to the guest room and cover both telephones with pillows to muffle the ring and not disturb her sleep. On this night, Marilyn does not return the phone to the guest room which, later, reportedly alerts the housekeeper that something is amiss—because “she hadn’t put the telephone to bed.” From this point forward, Eunice Murray does not hear anything further from Marilyn. Eunice soon retires to the guest room and is in bed, reading. The next time that she hears the telephone ring will be a bit after 8:30 when Marilyn’s attorney, Mickey Rudin, calls (Rudin is also Dr. Greenson’s brother-in- law). Bear in mind that Eunice will hear the phone ring on the second line, not on the telephone which Marilyn has taken into her bedroom. Also note that Eunice does not pass by Marilyn’s bedroom to answer the phone in the guest room— she simply walks through the bathroom which adjoins the two guest rooms.

8:00 PM

Peter Lawford originally states that during a phone call with Marilyn “nothing seemed unusual, only that Marilyn said she was tired and would not be coming over, wishing instead to go to bed early that night. She said she was feeling sleepy and was going to bed. She did sound sleepy, but I’ve talked to her a hundred times before, and she sounded no different.”
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Lawford then changed his story, stating that he received a phone call from Marilyn around 8:00 PM and that she had slurred speech and was at times inaudible. According to Lawford, Marilyn’s voice “drifted off” and he says he tried calling back several times, but the line was busy. He said that he considered going over to Marilyn’s home, only ten minutes away, but that instead he called his manager, Ebbins, and Ebbins instructed him that it would look bad: “For God’s sakes, Peter, you’re the President’s brother-in-law. You can’t go over there. Your wife is out of town, the press will have a field day.” Ebbins then phones Marilyn’s attorney, Mickey Rudin, to call Marilyn to see if she’s okay.
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Lawford’s original version appears much more credible due to the fact that his sense of panic regarding Marilyn actually occurs much later in the evening, at around 11:00 PM (and he never attempted to call Marilyn on her other phone line).

8:00 - 8:30 PM

Henry Rosenfield, a close friend of Marilyn’s, telephones Marilyn and later states that they discussed the upcoming trip to New York and taking in some theater while there, i.e., enjoying some Broadway plays together while in New York City. He states that Marilyn seemed normal; she sounded a bit groggy, but was not at all unusual and he was not concerned.
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8:25 PM

Mickey Rudin’s exchange (circa 1962, before the age of voicemail, many people, especially in Hollywood, had an answering service to take their messages on phone calls that they missed and they often referred to that service as their “exchange”) receives a call from Milt Ebbins (Lawford’s manager).
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8:30 PM

Rudin’s exchange relays the message to Mickey Rudin that he should call Milt Ebbins.
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8:30 PM

Ralph Roberts’ (Marilyn’s good friend) answering service receives a call for him. The caller is a “fuzzy-voiced woman” who asks for Ralph but leaves no message. Roberts had only given this phone number to four people, one of whom was Marilyn. He checked with the other three and they confirmed the fact that they had not called him, so he is sure that it was Marilyn.
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8:40 PM

Marilyn telephones famous hairdresser and good friend, Sidney Guilaroff, to talk and to arrange an appointment to have her hair done the following day. Guilaroff says she was upset when they had talked earlier during the afternoon but had calmed down and now is much “more composed” during this second conversation. They chat a bit and agree that they’ll talk more about things in the morning at her hair appointment. Sidney says “I never imagined we would never speak again.”
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8:30- 9:00 PM

Marilyn’s attorney, Mickey Rudin stated that he called Marilyn’s house and asked housekeeper Eunice to check on Marilyn and see if she’s okay. (Eunice later tells police that Rudin called her at about 9:00 pm). Eunice came back to the phone in a minute and told Rudin that she checked and Marilyn is fine. Rudin calls back Ebbins (Lawford’s handler) and tells him Marilyn is fine. Ebbins then tells Lawford that things are fine, but Lawford later states that he was still worried about her condition. Rudin’s official statement to investigators is: “Believing Miss Monroe was suffering from one of her despondent moments, Mr. Rudin dismissed the possibility of anything further being wrong.”
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9:00 - 9:15 PM

Marilyn calls an old friend, Jeanne Carmen—who states that she didn’t look at the clock but knew that it was somewhere between 9 and 9:30 (on another occasion she states that it was 9:00, so apparently it was closer to 9:00 than to 9:30). Marilyn asks her if she has a couple of sleeping pills she could bring over to her house because she doesn’t have any and can’t get to sleep. Carmen basically responds that she’s sorry, Marilyn, but she’s “hammered” (drunk), already going to bed herself and not in any condition to go over to anybody’s house. Other than that, Carmen reports that Marilyn sounded fine—she was used to hearing Marilyn when she was drunk or sedated (the two, according to Carmen, had been pin-up girls, models, together and then next-door neighbors at a previous residence of Marilyn’s), and she didn’t sound anything like that during the call—she simply sounded like an old friend who couldn’t get to sleep.

Carmen adds that her telephone rang again a bit later and, figuring it was Marilyn again, she didn’t answer.
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9:30 pm

Former boyfriend Jose Bolanos telephones Monroe and later states that Marilyn sounded normal during their conversation. However, in mid-conversation, Marilyn hears some kind of disturbance and goes to check on it, laying down the phone without hanging it up. She never returns to the phone, and Bolanos never hears back from her.
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9:30- 10:00 PM

We now know that, during this time period, Eunice had to have discovered that Marilyn was near death and placed an urgent call to Dr. Greenson who rushes right over (Dr. Greenson soon places a call from Marilyn’s home, so he’s obviously there). Eunice admits, later in her life when the heat from these tragic events has subsided, that Marilyn was still alive when Dr. Greenson came to the house, and that an ambulance was called and arrived before she died. One thing she later states very clearly is that “the doctor” was with Marilyn when she died, while Eunice waited in the living room.
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10:00 PM

Marilyn’s housekeeper, Eunice, later states that, at 10:00, she got up and walked past Marilyn’s bedroom door and saw a light on under the door, but decided not to disturb her. Note that this is almost definitely in reference to the same call from attorney Mickey Rudin that came earlier. Eunice keeps changing the times of these events over the ensuing years, but the call certainly seems to have come much earlier because there is a clear record of Ebbins’ call to Rudin’s answering service at 8:25, prompting Rudin’s call to Eunice. Eunice later stated that the call came at about 8:30 which would fit with the forwarded message to Rudin and with the manner in which events transpired. Eunice’s exact words regarding the call from Mickey Rudin are “He asked if Marilyn was alright. I said as far as I know she is. The light was on in her room and the telephone (cord) was under the door and these were indications that she was still awake.” Therefore, we can ascertain that there was no concern noted as of 8:30, but that a sense of emergency then surfaces about 10:00; that is also in accordance with the estimated time of death via the rate of rigor mortis.
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Around 10:00 PM

Norman Jeffries, the caretaker, states that he was working at Marilyn’s home all day on August 4. Jeffries states that he saw Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and two other men arrive and park their car around 10:00 pm. They enter Marilyn’s home and tell Jeffries and Eunice to leave them alone there. Jeffries and Eunice wait at a neighbor’s until the three men leave at approximately 10:30 PM.
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(Uncorroborated by neighbors)

10:00- 10:30 PM

From Marilyn’s home, Dr. Greenson telephones attorney Mickey Rudin and tells him that Marilyn is dead. Rudin says he’ll drive right over and he proceeds to do so. Mickey Rudin then calls Arthur Jacobs (Marilyn’s lead publicist), and Milt Ebbins (Lawford’s manager), and Ebbins then calls Peter Lawford.
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10:30 PM

This is the moment we can say it is a certainty that Marilyn is dead. Marilyn’s agent Arthur Jacobs (Pat Newcomb’s boss), receives an urgent message at a concert he is attending at the Hollywood Bowl. He returns to his guests, informs his future wife that something horrible has happened—Marilyn is dead—and they leave hurriedly. The call is from Marilyn’s lawyer, Mickey Rudin. Jacobs quickly drops off his fiancee and then goes straight to Marilyn’s house.
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