The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (12 page)

 

The revelations of
Goddess, Say Goodbye to the President
, Fred Otash's statements to the
Los Angeles Times
, and the furor over the cancellation of the
20/20
segment led to another public outcry for a formal inquiry into the death of Marilyn Monroe. At the instigation of Supervisor Mike Antonovich, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors once again voted unanimously to call for a grand jury investigation. In the fall of 1985, the Los Angeles grand jury and its foreman, Sam Cordova, concluded that there was reason to doubt the original coroner's verdict of “probable suicide.” On Friday, October 25, Cordova called a press conference to announce that there would, indeed, be an official grand jury investigation and that witnesses would be called to testify.

“There is enough evidence to substantiate a special prosecutor to work with the grand jury on the investigation,” Cordova told reporters. “A full investigation has never been done by the grand jury. People have not testified under oath. That should have been done a long time ago. It should have been done in 1962.”

That evening former Los Angeles Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Noguchi stated on KABC-TV that he too felt there should be a new investigation. Citing the bruises that had never been explained, and the specimens that had vanished, Noguchi said, “It gives an indication that there was something to hide.” Asked if by “something to hide” he meant murder, Noguchi replied, “Could be.”

However, on Monday, October 28, District Attorney Ira Reiner announced that Sam Cordova had been fired. While it was the first time in the history of California jurisprudence that a grand jury foreman had been removed from office, Reiner assured reporters that the dismissal had nothing to do with Cordova's investigation into the death of Marilyn Monroe. In fact, Reiner confided that the district attorney's office would undertake its own thorough and impartial investigation as quickly as possible. True to his word, the very next day the district attorney's investigation had been concluded. Reiner announced that he had reviewed the facts in the case, and there wasn't a “scintilla of evidence, new or old, that has been
brought to our attention which could support a reasonable belief, or even a bare suspicion, that Miss Monroe was murdered.”

When asked about Cordova's findings, Reiner replied, “As far as Cordova's concerned, he's history.”

For years Sam Cordova said nothing about his dismissal. In 1995 he disclosed the reason for his silence. He owned a laboratory in Sylmar, California, that was dependent on government contracts, and he had been advised not to speak out or he would put his business at risk. Now retired, Cordova confirmed that his dismissal was a direct result of his determination to have a grand jury investigation of the Marilyn Monroe case.

“The grand jury had discovered a great deal of information that left no doubt there had been a cover-up,” Cordova stated. “We had in our possession copies of internal memoranda of the coroner's office calling for the destruction of evidence.”

According to Cordova there had been political pressure to scuttle the investigation, but as a jurist representing the people of Los Angeles he felt he had the duty and the right to proceed. “Three days before my press conference my desk had been broken into, and somebody took my Monroe file,” Cordova stated. “I still feel very strongly that the grand jury investigation was warranted.”

 

The year 1992 was the thirtieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death. Forests of trees were pulverized to pulp by the publishing industry in an orgy of Marilyn books. Glossy book jackets proclaimed to reveal
The Truth at Last! The Untold Secrets! The Shocking Lies—The Explosive Truth!
Notable among the many publications were Susan Strasberg's
Marilyn and Me;
Robert Slatzer's second Monroe book,
The Marilyn Files;
and the Peter Brown-Patte Barham bestseller
Marilyn: The Last Take
. But perhaps the most significant revelation appeared in Daryl Gates's book
Chief: My Life in the LAPD
. In a chapter on Monroe, Gates wrote, “The truth is, we knew Robert Kennedy was in town on August 4. We always knew when he was here. He was the attorney general, so we were interested in him, the same way we were when other important figures came to Los Angeles…. So while we knew Robert Kennedy was in town that day, we paid no attention to where he went or what he did; whether he saw Monroe or not. Frankly, I never bought into the theory that she killed herself because he dumped her.”

Gates's statement confirmed once and for all the whereabouts of Bobby Kennedy on August 4, 1962.

 

As the publishing year celebrating Marilyn Monroe's enduring magic and mystery drew to a close, the strange death of Marilyn Monroe remained an enigma. There had been many revelations, and it became abundantly clear that there was an orchestrated cover-up of the events surrounding Monroe's death, but there was such a deluge of theories, allegations, denials, lies, and disinformation that the general public began to despair of ever knowing the truth. On three separate occasions, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich had been successful in obtaining a majority vote of the Board of Supervisors in recommending a grand jury investigation. Each attempt was subverted by those who didn't want the truth to be known.

Officials in the corridors of power, such as Chief William Parker, Captain James Hamilton, Coroner Theodore Curphey, Chief Daryl Gates, John Van de Kamp, and Ira Reiner, had hoped that the public would grow weary in time—that the clay of mendacity would harden in the aridity of the public's despair. Knowing that time was running out, Robert Slatzer once again prevailed on Mike Antonovich, and on September 8, 1992, for the fourth time, Antonovich presented a motion before the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors calling for an inquiry into the death of Marilyn Monroe.

After an eloquent presentation of the facts to the board by Robert Slatzer, Jack Clemmons, medical experts, and ordinary citizens, a representative of the district attorney's office stepped forward to speak in opposition to the motion. Contrary to his statements in 1986, Assistant District Attorney Ronald Carroll, who had conducted the 1982 threshold investigation, vehemently opposed the motion, stating that the district attorney's office had chased many theories and came up with nothing. “You could have someone from outer space say she was murdered,” Carroll stated, “But you have a body that shows no signs of murder.”

After Ronald Carroll completed his statement to the board and returned to his chair, the matter was put to a vote. An icy silence pervaded the chamber. This time the motion failed to even obtain a second.

It seemed that the passage of time and the deceptions of officialdom had been successful. Marilyn Monroe's death would forever remain a mys
terious enigma.
Probable suicide
would be the official verdict consigned to history….

…But in the fall of 1992 the distinguished publishing firm of HarperCollins announced its forthcoming publication
Marilyn Monroe: The Biography
, by eminent biographer Donald Spoto. Revealing that Spoto had been granted access to previously sealed documents, the book was heralded as “The definitive account of her life and death! The Truth! Finally!”

D
ue to its “explosive revelations,” advance copies of
Marilyn Monroe: The Biography
were withheld from reviewers. A prepublishing promo in the tabloid
Star
promised, “For the first time, the truth about her death is revealed—more bizarre and horrifying than anything a Hollywood screenwriter could devise!”

Arriving in the bookstores in March 1993, Spoto's biography denied that there had been a relationship between Bobby Kennedy and Monroe and absolved the Kennedys of any connection with her death. In his acknowledgments, Spoto stated that “Patricia Newcomb offered me unprecedented confidence and detailed many of the fine points of Marilyn's last two years…. Her signal contribution to this book are everywhere evident.”

In addition to calling previous Monroe biographers scurrilous journalists who wrote shameful books with “a disregard for the reputations of decent people and a profound indifference to the truth,” Spoto accused Dr. Ralph Greenson and Eunice Murray of murdering Monroe by administering a fatal barbiturate-laced enema. The reader was informed that Greenson and Murray's motive was that they had been fired.

Acknowledging that there was a cover-up of Monroe's death, Spoto created a conundrum: the book failed to reveal why the FBI, the LAPD, the district attorney, and the coroner had gone to such lengths for over three decades to protect the reputations of a psychiatrist and a housekeeper.

As Spoto began promoting the book, it became clear that his focus was on exonerating Robert Kennedy. He wrote that “scurrilous accounts” of Marilyn Monroe's affair with Robert Kennedy had “led to the completely groundless assertion of a link between Robert Kennedy and Marilyn's death.” Spoto termed the connection hilarious and went on to say, “It is important to establish definitively the truth of this matter.”

Spoto's methodology was the systematic elimination of witnesses' statements and established facts. He pointedly ignored Murray's statements to the BBC,
20/20
, and the
New York Post;
Marilyn's phone records; Jean Kennedy Smith's note to Marilyn; the helicopter logs; Dr. Robert Litman's notes regarding Marilyn and the Kennedys; Senator George Smathers's statements; Daryl Gates's confirmation that Robert Kennedy was in Los Angeles on August 4, 1962; Mayor Sam Yorty's disclosures; and Fred Otash's statements to the
Los Angeles Times
.

Rather than refute evidence proffered by investigative journalists, Spoto elected to assassinate the character of those bearing ill news of Camelot. Accusing Anthony Summers of manipulating and misquoting statements of interviewees, Spoto wrote: “In
Goddess
Summers ignored and/or frequently mispresented those he claims to have interviewed.” Summers took Spoto to the Queen's Bench division of the English courts. Examination of Summers's recorded interviews revealed the integrity of his research, and in a settlement on March 28, 1994, Spoto agreed to pay Summers a sizable sum as well as print a retraction of his accusations in the paperback and any future editions of his book.

Spoto also maligned Norman Mailer, Fred Guiles, Peter Brown, and a host of other writers before devoting dozens of pages to the denigration of Robert Slatzer, whom he accused of building a “nefarious industry” out of his absurd murder theories and “the nonsense about a love affair between Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy.”

Spoto's biography came at the end of decades of deception. Many of the key witnesses had died, and none had ever been required to speak under oath. It seemed that the full story of what happened to Marilyn Monroe would never be known. In her last interview, which appeared in
Life
the day before she died, Marilyn pleaded, “Please don't make me a
joke.” But the joke had been on those who wanted to know the truth and had so often been deceived.

In the fall of 1993, however, the remaining tumblers of truth fell into place—unlocking the vault of secrets that had been so firmly shut on August 4, 1962.

In all the accounts of that fatal day, Eunice Murray's son-in-law, handyman Norman Jefferies, vanished from the narrative of events sometime before noon on Saturday. In Eunice Murray's book,
Marilyn: The Last Months
, he is described as working on the remodeling of Monroe's kitchen early that Saturday morning. Jefferies is not identified as being on the scene again until the next day. Murray told Clemmons and the press that the first person she called after Greenson discovered Monroe's body was Jefferies—asking him to come and replace the broken window. In newspaper photos he is pictured at the Monroe residence Sunday morning as he is being led from the kitchen side door, along with Pat Newcomb, by the police. He is next seen opening the car door for Murray as she steps into her Dodge, and also pictured holding the passenger door open for Newcomb.

Inexplicably, Jefferies was never questioned by the police or the press. When Anthony Summers tried to locate him during his research for
Goddess
, he noted that Murray seemed anxious to prevent their meeting. “Murray seemed oddly reluctant to assist me in reaching Jefferies,” Summers stated. In 1983 Ted Landreth located Jefferies, living in Laguna Beach, California, but found him reluctant to be interviewed, ultimately refusing Landreth's phone calls.

Ten years later Jefferies was located in Russellville, Arkansas. Terminally ill and confined to a wheelchair, he spoke for the first time about the tragic events that occurred that Saturday—a day he termed “the worst he had ever experienced in his entire lifetime.”

Stating, “I guess they can't very well electrocute me in a wheelchair,” Jefferies disclosed that he never left the proximity of the Monroe residence on that horrific day. He had remained with his mother-in-law, Eunice Murray, from the time he arrived Saturday morning at about eight o'clock until he departed Sunday morning at approximately seven-thirty. He had been present during all the events that took place. “I was there in the living room with Eunice when Marilyn died, and after that all hell broke loose,” Jefferies stated. He was there when Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford arrived on Saturday afternoon. He was there when the ambulance arrived on Saturday night. He was there when Dr. Greenson arrived and
Marilyn died in the guest cottage. He was there in the early hours of Sunday morning when Monroe's body was moved to the bedroom. Norman Jefferies had been a key witness.

After years of obfuscation, Jefferies clarified that the reason Murray called Greenson that Saturday night was not “the light under the bedroom door” or “the telephone cord under the bedroom door” or anything to do with Murray's Piscean qualities; it was the sight of Monroe slumped on the bed of the guest cottage in a comatose state, her hand clutching the telephone.

Though many of the puzzling questions surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death were finally answered, new questions evolved. The key witnesses had conspired to conceal Bobby Kennedy's presence at Monroe's residence, as well as the time, location, and circumstances of her death. But why did officials substantiate the key witnesses' statements, and why did the key witnesses corroborate the officials? If it was a “national security matter,” as Chief Reddin and Mayor Yorty stated, what was the secret at the heart of the matter? What had locked this diverse group of people into a complex conspiracy to conceal the truth? And why was Marilyn Monroe murdered?

 

The 1982 district attorney's report on Marilyn Monroe's death concluded:

However, Norman Jefferies's revelations confirm that there was indeed “a massive, in-place conspiracy covering all of the principals at the death scene on August 4 and 5, 1962,” and among those seated in the Chapel of the Palms at Marilyn Monroe's funeral were accomplices to her murder and the cover-up.

That the mystery of Marilyn Monroe's death has never been resolved has a great deal to do with the mystery of her life, which was secretive
and very private. Norman Jefferies revealed that some of the key witnesses also led very secretive lives and had hidden agendas. In order to comprehend what happened on that fatal Saturday, it is necessary to know and understand the victim and the complex relationships she had with the disparate group of principals at the death scene.

One cannot resolve the secrets of life and death, or know how chance or fate deals with people or understand one of the great crimes of the twentieth century, without knowing the whole story. And while the mystery of Marilyn Monroe's murder will be solved, the mystery of her remarkable life can never be fully explained.