The Murder of Marilyn Monroe by Jay Margolis Read Free Book Online

“The results of the blood and liver toxicological examination show that there were 8 mg. percent chloral hydrate [seventeen 500-mg pills] and 4.5 mg. percent of barbiturates in the blood [forty-fifty 100-mg Nembutals] and 13.0 mg. percent pentobarbital in the liver.”
    Donald Spoto’s Marilyn Monroe biography noted that Marilyn had many receipts for enema paraphernalia (most likely located in more than one of her bathrooms). When the police officially discovered her body, only ten of fifty 500-mg chloral hydrate pills were still in the prescription bottle. According to Gary Vitacco-Robles, “The guest bedroom near the pool shares a bath (at left) with the third bedroom. The middle door accesses a closet. The door to the far right leads to a hallway and a linen closet.” Therefore, the water for the enema had been easily accessible and so were the linens later used to dry Marilyn’s body once the enema had been expelled. During the struggle, Marilyn received an injury on her upper back—a bruise not documented in Thomas Noguchi’s official autopsy report, but one that is clearly visible in a police photo that captures Marilyn facedown on the bed.
    Because the drug-laced enema only rendered her unconscious, Marilyn was still alive when Schaefer Ambulance attendant James Hall arrived with his driver, Murray Liebowitz. Had Marilyn been injected instead with massive amounts of Nembutal and chloral hydrate in one injection, she would have died before Hall and Liebowitz came on the scene.
    Less than a minute after they gave Marilyn a drug-laced enema, Kennedy, Case, and Ahern were once again preoccupied with a frantic search for the red diary. At the same time, Marilyn grabbed the only phone, the public line from the guest cottage, to call her masseur friend Ralph Roberts, yet she only reached his answering service. It was 10:00 p.m. The woman at the other end noted that Marilyn asked for Ralph in a “slurred voice,” only to be told he was out for the evening. Then she hung up, en route to losing consciousness as a result of the sleep-inducing chloral hydrate coursing through her body; a body that would be leaning on the phone when discovered a short while later by Norman Jefferies and Eunice Murray.
    Why would Bobby Kennedy risk destroying his skyrocketing career by becoming directly involved in such a dark turn of events? The fact that he was in Los Angeles from at least 11:00 that morning—when he was spotted on Stage 18 of the Fox lot by studio publicist Frank Neill—until after midnight proves he was willing to take that risk.
    Jefferies noted that Kennedy, Case, and Ahern departed Marilyn’s home at 10:30 p.m. Thereafter, it was due to the incessant barking of her dog Maf—so named because the white maltese terrier (not French poodle) was a gift from mob-connected Frank Sinatra—that Marilyn was discovered in the guest cottage by Jefferies and Mrs. Murray who stated, “I saw that the telephone was under her. She was lying on it.” Jefferies told Donald Wolfe, “I thought she was dead. She was facedown, her hand kind of holding the phone. It didn’t look to me like she was breathing, and her color was awful—like she was dead.”
    Nobody expected what the housekeeper would do next. Jefferies continued to Wolfe, “Eunice took the phone and called an ambulance. Then she put through an emergency call to Dr. Greenson, who was someplace nearby and said he would be right over. He told Eunice to call Dr. Engelberg.”
    Schaefer Ambulance attendant James Hall, Mrs. Murray, and Norman Jefferies all stated that Marilyn Monroe was still alive when Dr. Ralph Greenson arrived at the scene.
    Mrs. Murray told Anthony Summers, “Why, at my age, do I still have to cover this thing up? . . . When he [Dr. Greenson] arrived, she was not dead because I was there then in the living room.” Summers asked, “Marilyn was not dead when the first doctor arrived, is that what you’re saying?” Mrs. Murray replied, “That’s