Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (21 page)

Although it was a well-established fact that JFK had numerous extramarital affairs, in the context of 1963 America, the press would not publicize that fact—in the perspective of the era, that simply wasn’t done. Furthermore, JFK’s charm and wit helped him establish an excellent rapport with the White House and Washington press corps. Additionally, JFK benefited from a vast network of media assets and contacts that stemmed from the business empire of his father Joseph Kennedy. In short, the press was very deferential to the charismatic President Kennedy.

Therefore, JFK’s sexual exploits—Marilyn Monroe, Judy Campbell, Ellen Rometsch and Mary Pinchot Meyer were some of the more prominent names— were well-known but were kept out of the press. The danger—as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover pointedly warned—was the potential for blackmail as a result. In that regard, Ellen Rometsch was deported when she was suspected of being an East German Spy; and JFK abruptly halted his affair with Judy Campbell after being warned by Hoover that he was aware of her close ties to Sam Giancana, the Chicago Mafia chieftain.

No Love Lost Here, Folks:
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warned President Kennedy that he was very vulnerable to blackmail because FBI surveillance had confirmed his sexual escapades with women linked to the Mafia and the Communist Party. Robert Kennedy also implored his brother to curtail his sexual indiscretions, especially those that made him vulnerable to the Mafia-Marilyn Monroe and Judy Campbell. President Kennedy eventually succumbed to this pressure, and his relationship with Marilyn ended a short time later, a few months before her death.

Although President Kennedy had an excellent relationship with the press, his multiple sexual relationships were becoming a bit too public. The numerous extramarital activities were pushing the limits of acceptability—especially in 1963 America. JFK then ended his relationship with Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn had reportedly benefited professionally from her friendship with Johnny Roselli, the high-ranking Mafia associate of Sam Giancana. The Chicago Mafia was reportedly responsible for Marilyn Monroe’s success. Her career was said to have been launched and pushed hard by Tony Accardo, predecessor to Sam Giancana as chief of the Chicago Mob.

“The extensive influence the Chicago mafia had over Hollywood is best illustrated in 1948 when Chicago Mafia boss Tony Accardo had told John Rosselli to force powerful Columbia Pictures’ president Harry Cohn into signing then-unknown actor Marilyn Monroe to a lucrative multi-year contract. The usually highly combative Cohn quickly complied without opposition, mainly because Cohn had obtained control of Columbia through mob funds and influence provided by both Accardo and Rosselli.”
¹⁶³

So through Johnny Roselli, the Chicago Mafia bought its way into the film industry in Hollywood through their backing of Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Studios. This gave the Chicago mob a strong trajectory into show business, which they reportedly leveraged to their advantage in promoting the careers of Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra, among others. Harry Cohn is rumored to be the producer depicted in the “horse’s head” incident in the film,
The Godfather.
In the “real-life” version, Roselli was sent by “Chicago” to tell Cohn that Sinatra would star in the film. Cohn resisted:

“In a tense meeting in Cohn’s office, Roselli reportedly ordered Cohn to give Sinatra the part of Angelo Maggio in the film. Cohn not only refused, he told Roselli, ‘John, if we have a problem here, I’m going to have to make some phone calls,’ referring to Cohn’s own considerable contact in the underworld.

But Roselli had the backing of the entire national syndicate behind him and knew that Cohn was defenseless. ‘Harry,’ he said, ‘If we have a problem here, you’re a fucking dead man.’

In the end Sinatra got the part and the Academy Award to boot.”
¹⁶⁴

The exact same links to Organized Crime apparently played roles in the deaths of both Marilyn Monroe in 1962 and President Kennedy in 1963.

POSSIBLE SCENARIOS

The Kennedys

Some books have pointed to the possibility that the Kennedys had Marilyn killed because she was getting too public about her affair with the President. This theory is usually dismissed due to the fact that JFK and his brother Robert may have had their affairs and they may, at times, have gotten messy—but one thing that
has been
established is that neither one of them went around killing their girlfriends. Their interest in Marilyn was quite obviously of a more carnal nature, and it was simply on a different playing field than murder. Robert Kennedy in particular seemed genuinely concerned about the poor woman’s well-being and, well, let’s just say that murder is a bit of a stretch in that particular case. However, there is substantial evidence that Robert Kennedy was in town, and that he got out of town very quickly following her death.

CIA

The next group that can probably be eliminated from most serious discussions is the CIA. Some have posited that the CIA killed her to avenge the Kennedys for what some Agency people perceived as their betrayal of the intelligence community at the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba.

But the biggest problem with “the CIA did it” theory is very well-evidenced by one simple question:

“If the CIA wanted to implicate the Kennedys in murder, why make it look like suicide?”
¹⁶⁵

Mob

But if the Mob did it ... then it would have been a stroke of brilliance to make it appear a suicide. That’s another theory out there and, frankly, one that makes a lot more sense.

That was the scenario that was reported in the revealing Mob book,
Double Cross
(written by Giancana family members) and it’s also the scenario suspected by many Mob investigators. The Chicago outfit reportedly sent Tony “The Ant” Spilotro and Frank “The German” Schweihs to kill Marilyn (chloroforming her and then giving a lethal Nembutal enema) and to make it look like an overdose.
¹⁶⁶
Other accounts from Mob insiders posit that it was a different team of hit men—but they are consistent that they were sent by “Chicago.”
¹⁶⁷

It’s also very interesting to note that Chloral Hydrate (which was found in Marilyn’s body at a level of over seventeen capsules worth), is related to chloroform; hence the nickname of “knockout drops.”

It’s no secret about the war that was going on between Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department and Mafiosos like Sam Giancana and Carlos Marcello who felt that they had been completely double-crossed by the Kennedys.

What better way to cause the total career-collapse of Robert Kennedy than to have it go public that his heart-broken extramarital lover had felt so rejected by him that she decided to end it all? The evidence was right there at the death scene for discovery, in letters, notes and her diary. That’s why—so the theory goes—there was a long gap between her death and its being reported—it had to take time to clean up the crime scene and protect the Attorney General and President of the United States from being blackmailed by a bunch of hoodlums.

We looked into that scenario and, actually, quite a bit of it makes sense. We do not know exactly what happened at the time of Marilyn’s death, but we
do
know, bear in mind, what happened after it. And it gets pretty messy.

So somebody (or, more accurately, a
lot
of somebodys) went to a lot of trou-ble to cover the tracks that led to the White House. That much we know.

“If mobsters had hoped to use the Monroe connection to destroy Robert Kennedy, they were thwarted by the successful cover-up, however, worked largely thanks to Edgar. By grabbing the telephone records on their behalf, he made the Kennedys more beholden to him than ever.”
¹⁶⁸

According to a true crime author Christopher Claire, the hypnotic drug Chloral Hydrate had been used in murders by the Mob, to the extent that it was the Mafia’s pharmaceutical murder weapon of choice. In the year previous to Marilyn’s murder it was reportedly used in a number of Mafia murders.
¹⁶⁹

Looking at the big picture, a very complicated dance was taking place and it wasn’t just on Marilyn’s shag carpet either. It has been documented that Joe Kennedy, father of the president, went to Chicago prior to the 1960 election and enlisted the support of Organized Crime there. Some say they delivered the state of Illinois to JFK. Others say the Mob actually delivered Illinois
and
West Virginia. In any event, they certainly helped.

That fact certainly would have led the Mob, collectively, to believe that they had some “help” in Washington. Contrary to their expectations, the Kennedys in general and Robert in particular centered their careers around public attacks on the Mafia. Yet, contrary to this public posture, the CIA continued to enlist the support of the Mafia—and it has been documented that the CIA was working with the Mafia—especially in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, of which Robert Kennedy, who oversaw the intelligence community’s
Operation Mongoose,
was to some extent, probably aware. And, in this strange but real dance, that cooperation with the Mob continued even after publication of Robert Kennedy’s book,
The Enemy Within,
which warned of the venomous dangers of Organized Crime. Yet, at the same time that Robert Kennedy’s Department of Justice was waging war in vigorous prosecutorial efforts against the Mafia on a nationwide basis, others connected to the Kennedy Administration continued to work
with
them against Cuba.

So another possible scenario is that, rather than being villain and threatening to go public with info about the Kennedys, Marilyn was probably the victim.

The Mob was trying to get at the Kennedys
any
way that they could and they’d tried a lot of ways; through Sinatra’s friendship with them that the Kennedys finally halted due to Sinatra’s many Mob connections; through trying sexual blackmail by wiretapped conversations catching JFK with another woman; and who knows what else. Setting up Marilyn via blackmail, and/or killing her to implicate a Kennedy, were
exactly
the type of things they were looking for. Marilyn’s house was bugged for exactly that reason.
¹⁷⁰

So the notion that Marilyn was going to “spill the beans” on her affairs with the Kennedy brothers or on the plans to kill Castro, doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, nor does the claim that she was afraid of what the Kennedys might “do” to her.

Quite contrary to her “dumb blonde” screen image, Marilyn was nobody’s fool. She worked hard to construct a career that had taken her all the way to the top of the ladder. Why would she jeopardize that? She had an important career to protect; a career that she’d planned and strategically maneuvered to achieve. She wouldn’t risk that over a jilted love affair; she even cited that fact as the reason that her marriage to Joe DiMaggio could never have worked. Revealing a security secret or an affair with the President, especially in the context of 1960s America, would have sent her entire career crashing down faster than you can say Hollywood scandal. So the rumor that she was “going public” about her affairs, simply doesn’t hold up.

In conclusion, there’s a very good reason that the police always ask if the victim was linked to anyone with a criminal history, and if there’s anyone you can think of who might have wanted to see her harmed for any reason. On those last two notes, you can almost hear Marilyn’s friend, Frank Sinatra, singing:

“Chicago, Chicago ... “

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“How Did Marilyn Monroe Die?,” Tony Plant, July, 2004; http://southernwingsaircraft. com/howmarilyndied.html

The DD Group: An Online Investigation Into the Death of Marilyn Monroe;
David Marshall, 2005

Coroner,
Thomas T. Noguchi, MD & Joseph Dimona, 1984

Toxicology and Pathological Studies on Psychoactive Drug-Involved Deaths,
Louis A. Gottschalk, MD, 1980

Goddess: The Secret Lives ofMarilyn Monroe,
Anthony Summers, 1985