5 Conspiracy Theories About the Death of Marilyn Monroe
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In the early hours of August 5, 1962, movie star Marilyn Monroe was reported dead in her home in Los Angeles, California. She had been found lying face down in her bed, naked and with her hands by her side.
Around midnight, her housekeeper Eunice Murray had noticed that Marilyn’s bedroom light was on. She knocked on the door a few times, but Marilyn didn’t answer. At 3:00 AM, Murray started to worry and called Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn’s psychiatrist. After he failed to knock down her door, he looked through her window and saw her lying on her bed. He then broke the window, checked her for a pulse, and realized she was dead. The police were called at 4:30 AM.
Marilyn Monroe's bedroom.
Marilyn Monroe’s bedroom.
When they arrived, they questioned Murray, Greenson, and another doctor on the scene. They inspected the room and noticed that despite that there were empty pill bottles on her nightstand, there was no glass or cup of water anywhere to be found. Greenson estimated that Monroe died around 12:30 AM, while undertaker Guy Hockett thought her time of death sometime between 9:30 and 11:30 PM. The autopsy, conducted by Dr. Thomas Noguchi, concluded that Monroe had overdosed on sedative drugs, possibly to commit suicide.
Marilyn's body being taken out of her home.
Marilyn’s body being taken out of her home.
Her death has since been surrounded in controversy, and many of her fans and admirers believe that she was given the pills against her will. The investigation was quick and suspicious, and the official account of her death begs numerous unanswered questions. Why, for example, did it take Murray so long to call for help? What about the reports that Greenson summoned an ambulance and then turned it away after finding Marilyn dead? And how did a drinking glass, after the police search, turn up in Marilyn’s room? Murray would later change her story several times over her life, and the first policeman on the scene, Jack Clemmons, said that “Her hands were by her side and her legs were stretched out perfectly straight. It was the most obviously staged death scene I had ever seen. The pill bottles on her bedside table had been arranged in neat order and the body deliberately positioned, it all looked too tidy.”
There have been numerous theories about what really happened to Marilyn Monroe, many of them placing the blame on the Kennedy brothers or Dr. Ralph Greenson. Below are five of the most common ones, provided by crackpots and experts alike.
5. She was Murdered by Communists
Author and conspiracy theorist Frank A. Cappell.
Author and conspiracy theorist Frank A. Cappell.
In June 1964, far right-wing author Frank A. Cappell published arguably the first book that expressed skepticism about the official account of Marilyn’s demise, The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe. Cappell’s 70 page booklet featured some of the earliest tropes now common in conspiracy circles, including that the Kennedys had a hand in her death. Cappell argued that both Marilyn and Robert F. Kennedy were communists, and that Marilyn was ultimately the victim of a vast communist conspiracy. According to Cappell, “Many ‘suicides’ and ‘heart attacks’ and ‘accidental deaths’ are in reality murders ordered by the Communist Party.”
4. She was Killed by the FBI or CIA
Cover of Norman Mailer's best-selling biography.
Cover of Norman Mailer’s best-selling biography.
A lot of the ideas in Cappell’s booklet were introduced to the mainstream in Norman Mailer’s best-selling Marilyn: A Biography, which was published in 1973 to great public attention. Mailer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist never shy of provoking controversy, repeated the link between Marilyn’s death and the Kennedys.
He believed, to get back at the Kennedys for the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco, right-wing agents of the FBI or CIA killed Marilyn to upset the Kennedy brothers. He also claimed that Marilyn called the White House on the night of her death, and that the FBI confiscated her phone records. Mailer, however, didn’t have a single shed of evidence to back up his claims, and later admitted he only wrote the book for money.
3. It was a Fake Suicide Attempt Gone Awry
Peter Lawford and Marilyn Monroe at John F. Kennedy's birthday celebration in 1962.
Peter Lawford and Marilyn Monroe at John F. Kennedy’s birthday celebration in 1962.
According to this theory, based on a non-authenticated report supposedly circulated among the FBI in 1964, Marilyn thought she could revive her career by making a suicide attempt. Peter Lawford, a friend of Marilyn and the brother-in-law of Robert F. Kennedy, heard about this plan from some of Marilyn’s other friends. After telling Kennedy, whom allegedly was having an affair with Marilyn and wanted to get rid of her, Lawford persuaded Dr. Ralph Greenson and Eunice Murray to help orchestrate the suicide “attempt”.
So Greenson prescribed a few bottles of Seconal tablets to