Show Notes:
*This is not an exact transcript, but rather an outline of my notes.

Hi there! I’m Didi West, and this is Broken Limelight!

It’s been a while, right?

Yeah, uh. My bad. My kids have been sick and mama has been busy. If you hear barking in the background or something, just disregard it. It’s been too long and I need to put out this episode already.

Today I’m going to tell you guys all about Marilyn Monroe. And I’m really excited for this one because I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t know a lot about this case before I started researching it.

There are a lot of mysteries surrounding the death of Marilyn Monroe. The official cause of death was ruled to

be a suicide by overdose. I’ll explain why most people just don’t buy that.

There are a lot of theories about what exactly killed Marilyn. You may have heard the one that says that The Kennedy’s had her killed, as a result of her affair with JFK and his brother Robert. Others have said that the FBI or CIA had her killed because she was exposing secrets.

Ok so let’s start with Marilyn’s life. First I need to tell you about Marilyn’s mother Gladys, because Marilyn’s mother also had her fair share of trauma and I think it speaks to the way Marilyn was raised.

Gladys Pearl Monroe was born to her parents (hah, duh) Della and Otis. Otis died of syphilis of the brain, and not long after that, Della became kind of uh.. How do I put this? Kinda flirty. She had a lot of male visitors according to Gladys.

Eventually she fell in love with an oil driller, Charles, but Charles didn’t want her to move in with him because she had children.

So she pushed her 14 year old daughter, Gladys, into a relationship with a 26 year old man, Jasper Baker. All so that she could move in with Charles.

Gladys and Jasper had two kids together, Jack and Berniece. But Jasper was a drunk, abusive husband. So she filed for divorce and got custody of the kids, which she won, but Jasper took the kids-- he kidnapped the kids, and moved them out to Kentucky. Gladys tried really hard to locate her kids and get them back eventually just gave up. So she left them there and moved back to Los Angeles and got a job as a film cutter.

Marilyn didn’t actually know about her siblings for a while and she met her sister Berniece for the first time when she was 12.

In 1924, Gladys remarried to a guy named Martin Edward Mortenson, but they separated shortly after the marriage.

She then started seeing a guy named Charles Stanley Gifford, and became pregnant. She told him on New Years Eve, hoping he might propose, but he did not.

He was newly divorced and was digging the freedom so he offered her some money, which she refused.

So he was like well, fortunately you’re not actually divorced yet, so you can give this baby your husband’s last name.

So Gladys named her baby Norma Jean Mortenson.

Gladys and Martin would get divorced shortly after Norma Jean’s birth, and Gladys’ mother, Della, gave her a lot of shit for having a child out of wedlock. It was suuuper frowned upon. Like, unspeakable. It was said that in these days, a child born out of wedlock was born like with a stain on them.

So when they baptised Norma Jean, they did so under the name Norma Jean Baker.

Mental Illness ran in the family. It goes back all the way to Della.

Della suggested that Gladys give Marilyn to this nice couple across the street, the Bolenders when she was just 12 days old. She paid them $5 a week to take care of her.

On one occasion when Norma Jean was like 1 or 2, Della walked across the street to the Bolender home and used her elbow to break a window to get into the house and she demanded to see Norma Jean, saying that she had died and they were refusing to tell her family.

Ida Bolender like, didn’t know what to do so she showed her the sleeping baby. At one point, Ida walked away to get her a glass of water, and Della tried to smother Norma Jean with a pillow.

Ida caught her and became frantic. She grabbed the baby, and Della said that she was just adjusting the pillow.

The police came and it was such a scene, they decided to just take Della home and do nothing else about it.

Shortly after that though, she would start to hallucinate and have episodes and ended up in a hospital, and she died only about a month later at 51 years old.

Gladys ended up pretty much completely alone. She had lost all of her kids and her mother. Apparently her best friend Grace didn’t hear from her for like a year or two after Della died.

When Norma Jean was about 3 years old, Gladys decided that she was going to take Norma Jean back. She always meant to get her back, she intended for it to be a temporary foster situation. But she just like showed up at the Bolender’s house one day all frantic and demanded to take her home with her. Mind you, Norma Jean has no idea who she is at this point. And Ida tries to sit her down to talk and tell her that this is her home and they want to adopt her. Well at some point, Gladys managed to push Ida out the back door and lock it. So Ida’s like freaking out at this point not knowing what Ida’s gonna do. She ran around the house and back in through the front door, but she didn’t see them. She ran back outside and looked around and didn’t see them. She’s like, about to cry at this point when suddenly, Gladys comes out through the front door carrying a duffle bag with Norma Jean stuffed inside of it.

Ida managed to grab the bag and they kind of wrestled over it for a bit before Norma Jean eventually like fell out and ran to Ida.

They ran inside and locked the doors and Gladys like circled the house and tried to open doors and windows for a little bit until Ida finally was like “ok i called the police, they’ll be here any minute” and Gladys left.

Norma Jean stayed with the Bolender’s until she was about 7. Gladys convinced Ida that her episode that day were just because she forgot to take her pills. Ida felt guilty and tried and tried to get her to let them adopt her but she refused.

Gladys got a little place with her friend Grace and she would sometimes bring Norma Jean over for sleepovers. Norma Jean said she was afraid of Gladys and she would spend a lot of time hiding in the closet.

When Gladys took her home to live with her, Norma Jean knew who she was obviously, but she didn’t really know her well and she didn’t feel like a mother.

One day, Gladys had an episode where she was freaking about someone coming down the stairs and trying to kill her. She apparently grabbed a knife at one point and threatened to stab Grace.

Then she got news that her son who had been kidnapped, had died of kidney failure. She broke down and actually said to Norma Jean “why couldn’t it have been you?”

Just a couple of weeks after that, her grandfather hanged himself and died. She broke down and was eventually taken to a mental hospital and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Grace became Norma Jean’s legal guardian, but she ended up marrying a guy named Doc Goddard who had his own kids and didn’t want anything to do with Norma Jean. Not only that, but Doc started sexually abusing Norma Jean. So Grace put her in an orphanage.

Which is awful, at this point. Norma Jean is like 9 years old and her mom is still alive and she doesn’t understand why Grace is getting rid of her, and she just keeps crying “but I’m not an orphan!”

As you can imagine, she was probably already feeling pretty alone and unwanted by this point. She developed a stutter as a child.

Throughout all of the foster homes Marilyn lived in, she was molested or raped multiple times.

In one instance, one of her foster dads made her come into his room, and he locked the door and told her “now you can’t leave” and he raped her.

When she went and told her foster mother about it, the lady smacked her across the face and said “don’t you dare say such things about that nice man.”

Marilyn spoke about this publicly as an adult. In fact, she was one of the first women to open up about being a victim of sexual abuse.

In 1942 when she was about 15, she was living with Grace and her husband Doc again, but Doc got a job out of state and the law prohibited them from taking Marilyn with them. She was faced with having to go back to an orphanage, but there was one thing she could do to get out of going back-- she could get married. So Grace literally went nextdoor and asked her neighbor, “hey, do you think your son can marry Norma Jean so she doesn’t have to go back to the orphanage?” His name was Jim Dougherty. So they went on a couple of dates and then they got married when Marilyn was 16 and Jim was 21.

They moved to Catalina Island and they were happy for a while. Except she really wasn’t interested in having sex with Jim.

Jim was a merchant marine so while he was shipped out, Marilyn took a job at a factory making airplane parts. A photographer named David Conover went to the factory to photograph beautiful women who were assisting with the war efforts as a way to cheer up the brave men on the front. So of course, beautiful Norma Jean Doherty, who was 18 at this time, was chosen to be photographed.

She was still a brunette at this time. Conover told her that she was a natural model, he said “you could do this professionally”, and that was basically all she needed to hear.

She quit her job (against her husband’s wishes) and signed a contract with a model agency. She dyed her hair bleach blonde and threw herself into her work. She was said to be an incredibly hard worker.

She was really broke for a while and spent the little money she had on speech lessons, so she used to wander around practicing her speech.

I want to read a little passage from her memoir.

It says:

The lessons are a dollar apiece. For a dollar you could buy a pair of stockings and a hamburger sandwich. But stockings and a hamburger will never make you an actress. Speech lessons may. So with bare legs and empty stomach you hit the consonants of “Hail to thee, blithe spirit.”

There was this one occasion where she tried to cash a check from one of her jobs and she stopped and asked a police officer for directions to a bank. The officer was super friendly and walked her to the bank and everything. That night at around midnight, Norma Jean was sleeping in her bed when she heard someone cutting the screen of her window. She jumped out of bed and saw this man climbing into her bedroom window so she ran out to a neighbor’s house to call the police.

When the police got there, they looked around and didn’t find the prowler so they told her that she had nothing to worry about because an offender would never hit the same house twice in one night. And just as they were saying that, somebody knocked on the door. Which was weird because it’s like 1am at this point and Marilyn said she wasn’t expecting anyone. So she answered the door and it was the same man who was trying to climb through her window.

The man lunged at Marilyn and grabbed her. She started screaming and the cops stepped in. The man said something like “oh we’re old friends, tell them Marilyn.”

And the cops were actually like “well he knows your name and address so it seems like you’re friends with this guy.”

Fortunately, they decided to frisk the guy before letting him go, and they found a gun in his pocket. And upon looking closer, they saw that this gun was actually a police gun.

The prowler was actually the police officer that had helped her cash her check that day. He had actually been watching her cash her check and took down her name and address.

It turns out that the police convinced Marilyn not to press charges because that officer was a new officer and he had a wife and a kid and “it would give the police department a black eye.”

She struggled for a bit trying to get work. One of the first auditions she was offered was a big disaster. A man named Mr. Sylvester called her for an audition and offered to pick her up. They went to a studio and the door had the name “Dugan” on it, and Mr. Sylvester was like “Dugan and I share an office for auditions.” So he had her sit on a couch and read from a script and as she’s reading it, he repeatedly asked her to hike up her skirt higher and higher, until he actually climbed onto the couch with her and started groping her. So she socked him in the eye and jumped up and kicked him and then ran away.

Marilyn started getting more and more work as a model. Within 6 months she had appeared in at least 33 magazine covers.

She truly was a natural. She was said to have a magical quality that translated in photographs unlike any other model.

She decided to get into acting. She signed with 20th Century Fox and had a couple of small roles, but she was dropped from her contract. Apparently she wasn’t catching on. Then she signed a 6 month contract with Columbia and starred in a B-list movie, called Ladies of the Chorus, but they didn’t renew her contract either.

So it wasn’t easy for her to get her foot in the door of the acting world.

Marilyn did not mind sleeping her way to the top, however. Hollywood was a very male dominated industry, so a lot of the young struggling actresses of the time had fallen victim to the casting couch.

Apparently these Hollywood executives would have these little parties where they would like play poker and drink and smoke cigars and shit. And they would invite these aspiring actresses and have them like fill everyone’s glasses and shit, and they called them party girls. And then whenever the dudes saw a girl they liked, they would offer her the moon. They would offer her a contract or screen test and say that that could be their ticket to stardom, but more than often it wasn’t.

It seems like Marilyn was down to use her sex appeal to her advantage. But she was also prepared to draw the line when she had to. If she legitimately didn’t like the guy, she wouldn’t go with him.

For example, Harry Cohn who was the head of Columbia Pictures, he made a pass at her. He invited her to his yacht over the weekend but she thought he was sleazy. So she was like “oh i’d love to come on your yacht Mr. Cohn, and I’m so looking forward to meeting your wife.”

Dude was PISSED. In fact, he was one of the people who dropped her from Columbia. All because she wouldn’t put out.

In 1946 she divorced Jim Dogherty who was against her having a career in Hollywood. It just didn’t work out. Norma Jean was a model now and she adopted the name Marilyn Monroe. Jim said it was like she was becoming this whole other person. Which, she was. And I think Jim just wasn’t right for her.

Marilyn started getting small roles here and there, but she was slowly getting noticed. She had a little affair with Joe Schenck (though she always said their relationship was platonic) who was an executive at Fox 20th Century and about 50 years her senior, and he was apparently head over heels for Marilyn. He tried to get her connections but he wasn’t really helpful in her career.

Not like Johnny Hyde.

Johnny Hyde was the vice president at the William Morris Agency which was the top talent agency in Hollywood, and he was super influential in Hollywood. He instantly fell in love with her and got Marilyn a 7 year contract with Fox and small roles in multiple films.

She became Johnny’s protegee and his lover (despite him being married).

Johnny truly worked hard for Marilyn’s career. He was incredibly devoted to her. He left his wife and his kids for her, and he genuinely believed in her ability to become a star.

Johnny got her two big roles: one in All About Eve which was an all-star cast.

The other was in The Asphalt Jungle.

They were both small parts but everyone remembered her.

Both films also bagged a few Academy Awards.

So Marilyn started getting all this fanmail and the studios took notice and started getting her bigger roles.

Sadly, just a few days after Marilyn signed her contract with Fox, Johnny Hyde died of a heart attack. Marilyn was devastated.

But the work he had put into Marilyn’s career was paying off, and everyone was beginning to see what he saw in her.

After that, every role she did was a major role.

She got like, way more famous than even she could imagine. In fact, I don’t know if many other people in history had ever been as famous as Marilyn was at that time.

She worked in at least 10 films over the next two years. Marilyn was named “It Girl of the Year” in 1952 and had a reputation as the sexiest up-and-coming actress in Hollywood.

In 1952, Marilyn started dating baseball player Joe DiMaggio. They were set up on a date and Marilyn was expecting him to be like this flashy sports star. But when he got there, he was actually kind of quiet and sensitive.

They totally hit it off and they became like, the royal couple. They were both super attractive and everyone loved them both. They were very, very in love with each other.

In 1953, Marilyn starred in 3 classics that helped her rise beyond the rest.

-Niagra (which was in color)

-Gentleman Prefer Blondes

-How to Marry a Millionaire

Even though Marilyn was dating Joe DiMaggio, rumors were going around saying that Marilyn was having love affairs with pretty much every eligible hot male actor, and some not so eligible ones.

Joe really, really loved Marilyn. But he was also very possessive. Like in The Seven Year Itch where she did that infamous scene where shes like standing over a manhole and her white dress is blowing around, and all these guys would whistle at her. Joe was Piiisssssed. And he called her a whore and beat the shit out of her, saying that she humiliated him in front of the whole world.

He essentially wanted her to drop her career and become his house wife, not this sex symbol.

Marilyn would end up leaving Joe DiMaggio only 9 months into their marriage. He never stopped loving her though. It was said that he had spent $10,000 on a sex doll that looked exactly like Marilyn Monroe, which he called “Marilyn the Magnificent”.

This was confirmed by multiple sources. Because Joe would like, show it to everyone and he would say “she can do everything the real Marilyn can do.. Except talk.”

So like I said, Marilyn got way more famous than she ever imagined and her being SO in the spotlight was starting to affect her nerves. She became kind of a perfectionist and was said to ask for another take over and over again until she felt like it was perfect.

See, I think we all worry about how we look, but Marilyn literally had the entire world looking at her. She had to be perfect and beautiful at all times and people were waiting for her to trip up.

With all this pressure, she fell into this cycle of drugs.

Back in this day, it was really common for Hollywood executives to hand out “pep pills” to the actors. This would be like amphetamines to give them lots of energy, or sometimes to help them lose weight. Then they would be so wired at the end of the day that they had to take sleeping pills.

This was actually pretty common in Hollywood. Julie Garland was also a victim of this drug cycle and she actually died of an accidental overdose.

That’s a conversation for another day.

So Marilyn, like many other entertainers, became dependant on barbituates, amphetamines, and alcohol.

In 1956, Marilyn married the playwright Arthur Miller. With the marriage, she converted to judaism. As a result, all of her films were banned in Egypt until 1961 after she divorced Arthur Miller.

While she was married to Arthur Miller, her drug use was getting worse. She suffered a couple of miscarriages. She was in the habit of washing down her pills with champagne and she actually overdosed in 1957. Arthur called paramedics and they were able to save her.

She had another miscarriage in 1958, and she had some procedures done to see if she could have children and it was determined that she would never be able to have children. This put her in a really deep depression.

Arthur wrote a movie specifically with her in mind, called The Misfits where Marilyn played alongside Clark Gable.

On November 4th 1960, Clark Gable had a heart attack. Marilyn saw him as a father figure and when she was a little kid in the orphanage, she would keep a picture of him and pretend he was her father. On November 16th, Clark Gable died.

Marilyn and Arthur separated around this time.

Marilyn was reportedly suicidal during this period.

By this point, Marilyn was seeing a psychiatrist named Marianne Kris. Marilyn told Dr. Kris that she got really drunk one night and looked out her apartment window and thought about jumping. She said she would’ve jumped but she saw a woman she recognized walking on the sidewalk and she didn’t want to hurl her body at her or right in front of her.

Dr. Kris was worried that Marilyn was going to try to kill herself, so she convinced her to sign herself into a clinic in New York City. But it wasn’t what Marilyn was expecting.

Marilyn had been in detox clinics and hospitals before, so she thought she was going to have a fancy rest in a clinic. But instead, she was taken to the Payne Whitney psychiatric hospital, where she was locked in a padded cell and left alone.

She spent her time there banging on the door, bruising herself in the process. I guess they wouldn’t let her call anyone but the word got to Joe DiMaggio, and he came and got her after 4 days. And they didn’t want to let her out. Joe actually said “I’m gonna tear this place down, brick by brick.”

So after she got out, she went back to California and started seeing psychiatrist Ralph Greenson.

Dr. Greeson crossed a few lines with Marilyn. For one, they started sleeping together. Dr. Greenson fell in love with her. And he was like, making all sorts of decisions for her, like about who she should be hanging around with and who her friends should be. He more than likely was also prescribing her medications as well.

Ok so let’s talk about JFK for a minute.

Pretty much the one thing everyone has collectively heard is that Marilyn and JFK had an affair.

How many times they actually slept together is debatable.

From what I can gather, a lot of sources believe they didn’t actually have a relationship so much as they slept together like, once. But others will argue that they had a secret affair for like 2 years. Some believe that Marilyn was completely in love with JFK, while others say that she had no interest in having anything more than a fling with him.

So John F Kennedy was known to have affairs.

Marilyn was friends with John F Kennedy’s sister, Patricia, who was married to a guy named Peter Lawford, who was friends with Frank Sinatra and his little mob buddies. I think he was in the Rat Pack.

So Marilyn and John hooked up at a party at Bing Crosby’s house in March of 1962.

It’s believed that at this party, John asked Marilyn to sing Happy Birthday for him at his celebration in Madison Square Garden.

At some point, Marilyn started a relationship with John’s brother, Robert Kennedy, aka Bobby. Some sources say that Marilyn was blowing up John’s phone trying to see him again, so he kind of pawned her off on Bobby. I guess it was pretty common for John and Bobby to share girls too.

Marilyn hooked up with Bobby and again, many sources say she was in love with him.

Pat Lawford, the sister of the Kennedy’s and friend of Marilyn’s, tried to knock sense into her and explain that Bobby makes these promises to women but he would never actually leave his wife.

So in May 1962, JFK had his big birthday celebration where Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday in a breathy voice wearing a tan dress with rhinestones, making her look like she was nude.

Marilyn got into a lot of trouble with 20th century Fox for this though. She was actually in the middle of filming the movie Something’s Gotta Give and she had been calling out sick for weeks. But then she went and sang Happy Birthday to the president and of course, everybody knew about it.

When Marilyn did show up for work, she was always late or difficult to work with. So they ended up firing her and they sued her for $750k in damages. They tried to recast her, but her costar Dean Martin, refused to do the film with anyone other than Marilyn.

So they sued him too.

That movie never came out. Everything was abandoned after Marilyn died.

Now let’s talk about the night in question-- August 4th 1962.

And let me preface this by saying that there is an official version of events, and then the “true” version, according to witnesses who would speak up later.

So let’s talk about the official timeline first.

Marilyn spent the day at her home in California.

At about 4:30PM, her psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson came to visit for their psycho analysis session.

He stayed until 7PM and before he left, he asked Marilyn’s maid, Eunice Murray, to stay the night and keep Marilyn company.

Shortly after he left, Marilyn got a call from Joe DiMaggio’s son, and he told her that Joe had broken up with his girlfriend, who Marilyn didn’t like.

It was also rumored that Marilyn and Joe may have been planning to get remarried but I couldn’t confirm that.

Anyway she was happy about the breakup so she called Dr. Greenson and told him about it.

Supposedly there was nothing alarming about Marilyn’s behavior during either of these calls.

At about 8PM, Marilyn went to bed and she got a call from Peter Lawford. Allegedly.

So Peter allegedly called Marilyn and tried to get her to come out to a party at his house. Peter was the last known person to speak to Marilyn before her death.

He said that she sounded intoxicated and she said to him “say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to the President, and say goodbye to yourself because you’re a nice guy.”

This is one of the main reasons people believe that Marilyn killed herself.

Peter was concerned so he tried calling Dr. Greenson, but couldn’t reach him. He finally reached one of Marilyn’s lawyers, who called the house and spoke to the maid, Eunice, who said that Marilyn was fine.

Around midnight, Eunice got up to go to the bathroom and for some reason got a feeling that something was wrong with Marilyn. She claims that she could see under the door that Marilyn’s light was still on.

However, this couldn’t have been true because Marilyn had just gotten really thick carpet installed and it wasn’t actually possible to see any light under the door.

Not only that but Eunice actually had a bathroom in her bedroom. Meaning she wouldn’t have had to go anywhere near Marilyn’s room to get to the bathroom.

So Eunice I guess knocked and tried to open the door, but it was locked and Marilyn didn’t answer.

So instead, she called Dr. Greenson and told him that something was wrong.

Dr. Greenson allegedly looked through a window and saw Marilyn face down and naked, so he punched through the window to let himself in.

He found her dead, so then he called Marilyn’s physician, Dr. Engleberg, who pronounced her dead and called 911.

What’s strange is, they didn’t call 911 until about 4AM. So Eunice, Greenson, and Engleberg, who had all originally said they had found Marilyn dead around midnight, all changed their stories saying that they found her around 3:30AM instead.

That’s the official story that has always been told. Now there are other details that have come about.

Early in the afternoon on August 4th, Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford went over to Marilyn’s house. Bobby actually tried to break things off with Marilyn and told her that too many people were watching them closely like J Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Marilyn was livid, and she made all kinds of threats of exposing the relationship and exposing all these secrets, and then she screamed at him to get out of her house.

Peter and Bobby left her house at about 2:30PM that afternoon.

But Bobby was actually seen coming back at 9:45 that evening, by a neighbor and her 3 friends who were playing bridge.

Around this time, Marilyn was on the phone with actor Jose Bolanos. He recalls that she heard a noise coming from her guest cottage and she said she was going to check it out and be right back. However, she never came back on the line.

Marilyn’s house had actually been bugged and supposedly, it can be heard on the tapes that there was some kind of argument or scuffle between Marilyn and Bobby, and that Bobby and two aides were looking for Marilyn’s red diary in the guest house.

Marilyn kept all kinds of secrets in her diary, including details of all the people she had slept with.

Allegedly, Marilyn can be heard on the tapes saying “I’m tired of being used” and “the things I know could make the headlines.” And then Bobby replying “You’d better keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you.”

Then Marilyn is said to have become hysterical, and Bobby can be heard saying “give her something to calm her down.” and supposedly… you can hear them smothering her, someone saying “be careful with the pillow” and “watch out for the shot”.

Then Marilyn is apparently sedated and you can hear the men frantically rummaging through her house and looking for the diary. By 10:30PM, they come up empty.

Supporters of this account believe that Bobby and the men left the house without the diary, and left Marilyn there unconscious, but still alive.

Around 10:35, Marilyn’s maid, Eunice Murray came home with the handyman, and found Marilyn unconscious. They then called an ambulance, as well as Dr. Greenson.

The ambulance crew got there first. One of the ambulance attendants was named James Hall and he says that he found Marilyn still alive and tried to resuscitate her.

He didn’t actually see a copy of the death report until 1982, and at that point, he realized that what had been documented didn’t add up to his recollection of events.

So James I guess intubated her and color started coming back into her face. She was starting to come back.

Just as she was coming around, Dr. Greenson showed up and started taking over. He instantly announced that they needed to stop the resuscitation, and he pulled out a gigantic hypodermic syringe that was like, nothing any normal doctor or psychiatrist would just be carrying around in their bag.

According to James, that’s when 3 more people arrived--

Peter Lawford, Pat Newcombe, who was Marilyn’s publicist, and Marvin Iannone, a detective who had worked closely with Bobby in the past.

James assumed that this giant heart needle was going to have an adrenaline shot or something to revive her. But what really concerned him was the manner in which it was administered.

Here’s a clip of James sharing what he saw.

--Clip of James Hall--

James has never changed his story, but people accused him of lying for attention.

Interestingly, James was the only person in this case take a polygraph test. And I know that polygraph tests aren’t admissible or conclusive, but what’s interesting is that James actually took FOURTEEN fucking polygraph tests and passed every single one.

It’s just interesting considering, not a single other person seems to be telling the truth here.

I also don’t see why he would lie.

Of all the people present when this allegedly happened, 3 of which eventually confirmed that Greenson was present when Marilyn died.

Peter Lawford opened up years later, after both JFK and Bobby had died. And he said that he heard Bobby call Dr Greenson and tell him that Marilyn was going to expose her relationship with him (Greenson), and that could cost him his medical license.

Supposedly, Bobby then convinced Greenson that she had to be taken care of.

I found another more in depth account given by Peter. This was from an interview he did with a retired detective in 1982.

Here’s what Peter ended up saying:

Bobby Kennedy secretly flew out to see Marilyn on August 4th 1962. At this point, she was blowing up his phone and threatening to expose the affairs.

Peter Lawford picked him up and took him to Marilyn’s. Almost immediately, things got heated. Marilyn accused Bobby of treating her like a whore.

Supposedly, according to Peter, Bobby slammed her to the ground and started shouting at her, and told her to shut her mouth.

She got up and slapped him, at which point Bobby got pissed and Peter thought he was going to hit her, so he pulled him back. Then Bobby stormed off and started rummaging through Marilyn’s shit, looking for her diary where she wrote about her relationships.

Later on, Peter allegedly saw Bobby giving Marilyn a glass and telling her to drink it. She mentioned that it tasted weird, and he told her “finish it. Hurry up.”

Bobby and Peter kept looking for the diary and when they came back in the room, they found Marilyn on the sofa, kind of leaning, and she was unintelligible, and she didn’t seem to be breathing.

Bobby allegedly grabbed Peter’s arm and said “leave her”.

Then two guys, presumably from the CIA showed up, and Bobby ordered Peter to drive him to the airport while these guys covered up and made it look like a suicide.

A few weeks after Peter admitted this to an officer, the officer was attacked in what he called a mob-style assassination. He was driving in an unmarked car and someone on a motorcycle just pulled up next to him and shot at him. He survived, barely. He had some pretty extensive injuries but he did not die.

Peter Lawford died 2 years later of cardiac arrest.

So like I said, the police were called by Dr. Engleberg at about 4AM on August 5th 1962.

The investigator that showed up was named Officer Clemmons and when he questioned Dr. Engleberg, Dr. Greenson, and Eunice, he asked them all why it took them 4 hours to call 911.

They didn’t give him an answer. Well, they said they needed to get permission from Fox to call 911. Which seems stupid, I mean why would Fox want them to delay calling the cops?

So he asked Greenson and Engleberg, “what were you doing during those 4 hours?”

And they were just kind of speechless and then finally they were like “we were just talking.”

……

For FOUR HOURS?!! Just hanging out talking in her house while her lifeless body’s just laying there?

Well that’s when all 3 would change the story saying they didn’t find her at midnight, but actually around 3AM.

So, based on the rigor mortis, it was estimated that Marilyn had actually died sometime between 8:30PM and 11PM.

She was found to have overdosed on barbituates and was surrounded by empty pill bottles.

I mean many empty pill bottles. All the lids were placed perfectly on the bottles.

What’s weird is, they didn’t find any trace of the pills in her stomach, and she hadn’t vomited.

This could be explained if Greenson injected something into Marilyn’s chest.

There were no puncture wounds, however, puncture wounds aren’t always found. And in this case, Marilyn’s body was found face down, meaning blood would’ve pooled to the front of her body, which could make it harder to see the wound.

Officer Clemmons also stated that her body looked posed. He believes that she was murdered and the suicide was staged.

Marilyn’s body was found in her bed facing down, and her hand clutching a phone. It’s believed she actually died in the guest cottage and was moved to her bed.

Another weird thing about the crime scene is that Officer Clemmons noticed there wasn’t a glass of water anywhere, which was weird considering the amount of pills she had supposedly taken. In fact, the water in her master bathroom wasn’t working, so she couldn’t have gotten water from there either.

Clemmons searched and searched the room for an empty or half-empty glass of water and never found one.

But oddly enough, when the police started showing up to take photographs, there was suddenly a glass of water out in plain sight! It was in the photos and everything. Clemmons is sure that was placed after he analyzed the scene because he looked everywhere.

After an hour at the crime scene, more LAPD officers started showing up and Clemmons was replaced by none other that Marvin Iannone-- Bobby’s buddy and go-to security man in LA.

Just a hours after her death, Marilyn’s death was ruled a “probable suicide”.

When medical examiner Thomas Noguchi requests toxicology tests on the body, he’s told that Marilyn’s organs had been disposed of.

Eunice Murray supposedly found the red diary and gave it to the coroner’s office.

The deputy coroner’s aide says the diary was handed to him and he placed it in a locked safe overnight, but the next day, it was gone.

When Marilyn died, nobody claimed her body. She didn’t actually have any family. Eventually, Joe DiMaggio claimed it and he sent flowers to her grave twice a week for 20 years.

A lot of people claim that she was suicidal though. She had a hard life and of course had a lifelong battle with her mental health.

She had been fired from Something’s Gotta Give and sued by Fox.

But according to letters she had written to her acting coach, Marilyn said this was actually the happiest time of her life. She had actually gotten her job back with Fox and Something’s Gotta Give was back in the works with her as the leading lady.

It seems that she was actually planning a comeback. She was getting ready to make big moves and keep her career vamped up.

Either way, Marilyn’s death has been accepted as a probably suicide. It’s hard to say otherwise without being labelled a conspiracy theorist, but it is what it is.

I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I know this case blew MY mind hole. If you’d like to take a look at some photos and videos of Marilyn Monroe and watch some interviews from witnesses, be sure to check out brokenlimelight.com. Just for funsies, I also uploaded a video of Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend because, man, she really was good!

Be sure to follow Broken Limelight on facebook! Interact with me, send me an email or something if you want to hear a particular case covered.

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