Ep. 91 | The Mysterious Life & Death Of Marilyn Monroe

She was born unwanted, and she became unforgettable, and she died under circumstances that have haunted us for over 60 years. But to understand the mystery of Marilyn Monroe's death, we have to start with the girl she was before the world knew her name. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder all things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually-minded, little brat! Today, this is a very highly requested video. A lot of you guys watched or listened to my Princess Diana Deep-Dive video, and a lot of you requested "I do the lovely Marilyn Monroe" next. So here we are, please let me know what other videos you guys want to see. So for that further ado, let's unpack our seat belts, go mock-fired on the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through the swing shield into the life and mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe. On June 1st, 1926, in the charity ward of Los Angeles General Hospital, a baby girl was born at approximately 9.30 a.m., and her birth certificate bore the name Norma Jean Mortensen. Though, she would later be baptized Norma Jean Baker. And her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, was a 24-year-old film-negative cutter who named her daughter after Silent Screenstar "Norma Talmadge", or so the story went. But Marilyn's half-sister, Bernice, would later dispute this in her 1994 memoir, claiming the name came from a family-friend, Norma Jean Cohen Seedman. And the father, listed on the birth certificate, Martin Edward Mortensen, Gladys' estranged second husband, was almost certainly not the biological father, because he had separated from Gladys months before conception and would later insist he never consummated the marriage. And the true father, as DNA evidence confirmed in 2022, was Charles Stanley Gifford, Gladys' supervisor at consolidated film industries. And when she became pregnant, he wanted nothing to do with her or the child. And at 18, Norma Jean finally tracked down his telephone number, and his response was devastating, saying, "I married, I'd have a family, I don't have anything to say to you. See my attorney." Which is just so incredibly heartbreaking, like to track down your father and for him to just tell you to contact lawyers, and he doesn't want to deal with you, like you're a speck of dust that's just annoying to him at, it's just horrible. Not a great way to start out life, and she would even try twice more to meet him, traveling to his dairy farm in Hemitt, California, in 1950, and again, in 1961, and it could be more meetups, but we don't know, for sure. But both those times, he refused to see her. And if all that wasn't enough already, mental illness also saturated Gladys' bloodline. And her father, Otis Monroe, had died in an asylum from syphilis, and her mother, Della, suffered from what would today likely be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, and a great grandfather had also died severely mentally ill. So 12 days after giving birth, Gladys placed Norma Jean with Albert Wayne and Ida Bollinger, a deeply religious evangelical couple in Hawthorne, California, who took in foster children for $5 a week, and Norma Jean would spend seven years calling them Aunt Ida and Uncle Wayne, believing for much of the time that they were her actual family. And when the child instinctively called Ida, "Mama," the woman corrected her sharply, saying, "Don't call me mother, I'm not your mother." Let's calm down a little bit, it's a fucking child, alright? But oddly enough, even though she had that reaction, the Bollinger's did want to adopt her, but Gladys refused. And what Norma Jean didn't know was that she had siblings as well, and Gladys' first marriage to Jasper Newton Baker had produced two children, Robert Kermit, Jackie Baker, and Bernice. And when that marriage collapsed in 1923, Jasper basically kidnapped both children and fled to Kentucky, and Jackie died in August of 1933 at 15 from kidney disease, shattering Gladys' fragile equilibrium. And Norma Jean and Bernice finally met in autumn of 1944 and formed a genuine bond. And when the summer of 1933, Gladys purchased a small white bungalow at 6812 Arbol Drive in Hollywood, and she took in lodgers a British couple named George and Maud Atkinson, both actors, to help with the mortgage. For a few months, mother and daughter lived together, but it would last less than a year. In January of 1934, Gladys suffered a complete mental breakdown, and would be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and committed to Norwalk State Hospital. And she would spend the rest of her life cycling in and out of psychiatric institutions, eventually outliving her famous daughter by more than two decades before dying in 1984. But over the next several years, Norma Jean lived in approximately 12 different foster homes. Number 13, 1935, 9-year-old Norma Jean became Ward, number 3463, at the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society, at 815 North El Centro Avenue in Hollywood, better known as Holy Grove. And she remained until June 12, 1937. And from the dormitory windows, the children could see the RKO Studio's water tower. Quote, I used to think there must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star, but I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest. She would later say, reflecting on those moments where she was staring at the water tower. And the Atkinsons took her first for roughly 16 months, and something happened in the house she would never fully articulate, and she developed a severe stutter and became withdrawn. And psychiatrists say now that there could have been some abuse in that household that would have caused her to develop a stutter and to withdraw, but nothing is confirmed. But in another home, it would be confirmed that a border did abuse Norma Jean. And when she reported it, her foster mom slapped her face, saying, "I don't believe you. Don't you dare say such things about that nice man." So just, I mean, she had an incredibly, incredibly rough childhood. And Grace McKee, Gladys' best friend, became Norma Jean's legal guardian in 1936. And Grace, adored movies and was obsessed with Jean Harlow, saying quote, "Someday you'll become an important woman," unquote. She would tell Little Norma Jean, quote unquote, "a movie star." But Grace's own life was chaotic, and she married Irvin or Doc, Goddard, who allegedly molested 11-year-old Norma Jean in 1937 as well. So she's going to multiple houses, and she's getting taken advantage of by these men that she thinks she should be able to trust, and they severely let her down and cause decades worth of trauma. And Grace's aunt and a lower provided the one true bright spot, and Norma Jean would live with Anna in Sawtell from 1938 to around 1941, saying quote, "She changed my life," unquote. Monroe would say later in life. And she would also go on to say she was a wonderful human being. But not everything was darkness, because she excelled in English class, and she loved writing and contributed to the school newspaper at Emerson, Jr. High. The girl who emerged from those 12 foster homes and that orphanage dormitory was not merely damaged, she was determined. And at the window of Holly Grove watching the RKO Water Tower catch the California light, she had made herself a promise. She would dream harder than anyone and become someone the whole world would want. So in 1942, 15-year-old Norma Jean faced abandonment again. And Grace McKee, Goddard's husband, had been transferred to West Virginia, but California law prevented them from taking their ward out of the state. And the alternative was Holly Grove, The Orphanage, but Grace would have another idea. The Goddard's neighbors included the Dottry family, whose son James was a handsome 21-year-old working at Lockheed Aircraft. And Grace approached Jim's mother with a business proposition. If Jim married Norma Jean, she wouldn't have to return to The Orphanage, and Jim would later insist genuine affection developed between them after a Christmas dance in late 1941. But the primary catalyst was desperation, not romance. So, now she's just getting sold off to a random guy, although not to go back to The Orphanage, but now she's got to be married to this guy, this random guy. But anyway, on June 19, 1942, 18 days after her 16th birthday, Norma Jean became Mrs. James Dottry at 432 South Bentley Avenue in Los Angeles, with a reception at the Florentine Gardens. And to Mary, she dropped out of university high school. And the marriage wasn't miserable, and Jim was fundamentally decent. It was just said to be ordinary. And she called him Daddy, which is a term revealing more than she intended about what she was searching for. She had no really good father figure in her life, so now her husband, when she's a child right now, but her husband's kind of becoming her father, it's just really messed up. And years later, she would assess it honestly, saying, quote, "My marriage didn't make me sad, but it didn't make me happy either." actually our marriage was a sort of friendship with sexual privileges." But in April of 1944, Jim shipped out with the merchant Marine, and rather than wait passively, Norma Jean got a job at the radial plane munitions factory in Ven News, inspecting parachutes and spraying airplane parts with fire retardant for $20 a week. "Different times, I tell you what." For the first time, she was earning her own money, and in late 1944, Army photographer David Conover arrived at the factory, dispatched by Captain Ronald Reagan's first motion picture unit to shoot female war workers for morale purposes. Because those guys needed pictures of gals, you know, you know what I'm saying? And Conover spotted a pretty girl putting propellers on airplanes, saying, "She had curly ash blonde hair, and her face was smudged with dirt. I snapped her picture and walked on. Then I stopped stunned. She was beautiful." And he spent the next two weeks teaching her how to pose, recognizing something she had always suspected about herself. So by August of 1945, Norma Jean walked into the blue book modeling agency run by Emiline Snively. And Snively's assessment was measured, pretty but not exceptional, better suited for pinup work than high fashion. But there was something the camera might capture. And Norma Jean threw herself into the work with surprising intensity. And by early 1946, she appeared on approximately 33 magazine covers, and Snively saw unrealized potential, saying, "You've just got to bleach and straighten your hair. Because now your face is a little too round and a hair job will lengthen it." Unquote. Different time. I mean, not really even modeling agencies today. I feel like they're even more brutal, so maybe it's actually pretty light. But in February 1946, photographer Raphael Wolfe paid for the transformation, because he needed a blonde for a shampoo ad. And at Frank and Joseph's beauty salon, her brown curls were chemically straightened and lightened. And even her widow's peak was removed through electrolysis. But her blonde hair would become perhaps the most famous physical characteristic of the 20th century. So Jim Dottry, her husband at the time, asked her to give up modeling, because he wanted the teenage bride he'd left behind. But she now had a taste for attention and possibility in the first glimmers of her childhood dream. Guy was wanted to hold her back, alright? And in 1946, she filed for divorce in Las Vegas. And the decree was finalized on September 13th, 1946, exactly 11 years to the day after she'd been admitted to Holy Grove as board number 3463. And Jim would learn that his marriage was overwhelmed aboard a ship on the Yangtze River. Like letter liver dreams, but I guess there was no other way to tell him, you know, at least she told him. And she didn't go off and run around, you know what I mean? But he would later become an LAPD detective and the department's first SWAT trainer giving interviews about Norma Jean until his death in 2005. But by the end of 1946, Norma Jean was 20 years old, newly divorced and standing at a crossroads. His magazine covers paid the bills, but magazines weren't movies. And the RKO water tower she'd stared at through the Holy Grove window was no longer just a symbol. It was a destination. So the man who would give Norma Jean a new name had once started alongside the original blonde bombshell. And Ben Leon was a fox executive in 1946. But two decades earlier, he'd appeared opposite Jean Harlow in Hell's Angels. And when the 20-year-old model walked into his office that summer, he felt the past reaching forward. Quote, "It's Jean Harlow all over again," he would say. And Leon arranged a screen test without full approval from studio head Daryl F. Zannock. And it was filmed in July of 1946 at 5.30 a.m. on a deserted soundstage belonging to a Betty Gravel picture. And cinematographer Leon Shamroy, a four-time Academy Award winner, watched through his viewfinder as Norma Jean walked across the set, sat on a stool, and lit a cigarette. And she wore a floor-length sequined gown, no lines purely visual. And Shamroy described what he saw in near-mystical terms. Because most people looked worse on screen. Oh, like your girl here, right? That's why I stand so far back from the camera, you know what I'm saying, all right? But Marilyn Monroe looked better. And the camera just loved her in a way that couldn't be taught. But Zannock remained unimpressed. But when RKO showed interest in signing her, he agreed to a contract rather than lose her to a rival. So on August 24th, 1946, Norma Jean signed with 20th Century Fox for $75 dollars a week. And Leon suggested, Marilyn, after Marilyn Miller, the legendary Zeig-Feld Folly star. And for the surname, she chose her mother's maiden name, Wynru. And other names had been considered like Carol Lynn, Claire Norman, Meredith, but Monroe felt right. And the legal change wouldn't come until February 1956. But from August 1946 onward, Marilyn Monroe had taken Norma Jean's place. So Marilyn Monroe was born. And years later, she would reflect on what the old name represented, saying, quote, "unwanted, shy, an orphanage slave." Marilyn would later say, but Marilyn Monroe would be wanted by everyone. So the first six months at Fox were spent in classes, acting, singing, dancing, and she also enrolled at the actor's laboratory theater, a school with progressive political leanings that would later cause problems during the red scare. And their assessment was discouraging, which was too shy and too insecure. So when her contract came up for renewal in August of 1947, Fox declined to extend it. But Columbia Pictures signed her in 1948, hoping to create another Rita Hayworth. And she began working with drama coach Natasha Littess, a Berlin-born teacher who would become one of the most important and controversial figures in her personal life. And Columbia gave her one film, "Ladies of the Chorus," a low-budget musical. And it was her first starring role. She could sing, she could move, and she had presence. But none of it was enough. And in September of 1948, Columbia dropped her too, and two studios had now decided Marilyn Monroe wasn't worth keeping. But what saved her career was a man who fell hopelessly in love with her. Johnny Hyde Johnny Hyde was a vice president at the William Morris agency who had helped build the careers of Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner. And he was 53 married and suffering from a serious heart condition. And when he met Marilyn in 1949, he had around two years to live. But Hyde became convinced she was destined for stardom and set about making it happen. And he paid for acting classes, clothing, cosmetic dental work, and he secured auditions impossible for an unsigned actress. And he begged her to marry him, I feel really bad for his wife, promising his fortune. But Marilyn refused, and she wouldn't marry a man she wasn't in love with, not even for security. But the orphan who had married at 16 to escape institutionalization had grown into a woman with principles. And in 1950, Hyde delivered the two auditions that changed everything. To the ash fault, Jungle, directed by John Huston, gave Marilyn perhaps five minutes of screen time as the young mistress of a corrupt lawyer. And Huston had resisted casting her initially, suspecting Hyde was pushing his girlfriend. But when she auditioned, the nervous young woman disappeared. Saying quote, Marilyn didn't get the part because of Johnny, unquote. Huston said, later, quote, she got it because she was damned good, unquote. And critics singled out the unknown blonde as a revelation. And all about Eve truly announced her arrival. And Joseph Mancoix's masterpiece starred Bet Davis and Baxter, George Sanders, and Celeste Home. And Marilyn played Miss Claudia Coswell, a graduate of the Copa Cabana School of Dramatic Art. And it was a small role, but she played the dumb blonde with such precision that audiences couldn't tell if she was in on the joke. And that ambiguity suggested depth beneath the surface. So watching her hold her own among titans, Zannock finally understood what Lyon had seen four years earlier. And Fox offered a new contract. But this time, they meant to keep her. So the early 1950s became a blur of increasingly prominent roles, with don't bother to knock in 1952, which gave her a rare dramatic lead as a disturbed babysitter and then came 1953, the year that transformed her from promising newcomer to a phenomenon. In Niagara, cast her as a femme fatale, plotting her husband's murder. And it was the first time her name appeared above the title. And gentlemen prefer blondes, one of my favorites. Paired her with Jane Russell, the centerpiece, Marilyn descending a staircase in a pink gown, singing "Diamonds are a girl's best friend." Oh, I love that booby. If you haven't seen it, you gotta go watch it, go watch it, alright. And it became one of the most iconic sequences in cinema history. And how to marry a millionaire team-turner with Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall. So three massive hits in a single year. So the orphan from Holly Grove had become the biggest movie star in the world. world. So Natasha Lightis remained her primary drama coach, present on nearly every set, and directors despised her constant presence, but Marilyn refused to work without her. And in 1955, that dependence shifted to Lee and Paula Strasberg. And Lee ran the actor studio in New York, the Temple of the Method Acting, where Brando and Dean had trained, for those of you who don't know, the method demanded excavation of personal trauma in service of character. And for Marilyn, who had more trauma than most, it was both liberating and dangerous, and the Strasbergs would remain central to her life until her death. And Lee would inherit the bulk of her state. And in January of 1955, Marilyn did something unprecedented. She announced the formation of Marilyn Monroe Productions with photographer Milton H. Green. At the time, called her "a shrewd business woman," and Fox was forced to renegotiate her contract, granting approval over scripts and directors, which were rights virtually unheard of for any actor let alone a woman in the '50s. So the company produced "Busstop" in 1956, and "The Prince and the Showgirl" in 1957, and her performance in "Busstop" earned a Golden Globe nomination and the best reviews of her career. So by the late 1950s, Marilyn transcended movie stardom. And the white dress, billowing over a subway grate in the seven-year itch, filmed in 1954, and was released in 1955 and had become perhaps the most famous image in cinema history, also one of my favorites. But she proved she was more than a photograph with some like it hot. And Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy cast her opposite Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as Sugar Kane, and the shoot was notoriously difficult, and her insecurities required dozens of takes for simple scenes, but the finished film was a masterpiece. And Marilyn won the Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy, the only major award of her career. So she had reached the pinnacle. 33 years old, the most famous woman in the world, finally recognized as a legitimate artist, but she was falling apart. But to understand why she was falling apart, we need to step back a couple steps. So the marriage that America wanted to believe in last exactly 274 days, is when Marilyn Monroe and Joe Demagio exchanged vows at San Francisco City Hall on January 14th, 1954, the press called it "The Marriage of the Century". The baseball legend and the blonde bombshell two icons joining their lives. And they had met in 1952, Marilyn expected a flashy New York sports type and was surprised to find a reserved, almost shy man who didn't make a pass at her right away. And that restraint intrigued her. She was so used to people just like throwing themselves at her because she was like the sex icon of the century. But Demagio took her to family dinners, introduced her to his Italian relatives, showed her what domestic life might look like. And for a woman who had never known a real family, the vision was intoxicating. But Demagio wanted a wife, not a movie star, not a sex symbol. He imagined she would be content with a quiet life in San Francisco away from Hollywood. And he would be catastrophically wrong, as we've seen this in the past with the other guy who wanted to bring her down. Joe Demagio was just as bad if not worse. But their honeymoon took them to Tokyo. And when Marilyn made a side trip to Korea to perform for troops over 100,000 soldiers gathered, she returned to the hotel, glowing, saying, "Joe, you've never heard such cheering." And his reply was, "Yes, I have." Bumbast excited, okay? But this exchange would capture everything that would doom them, because Demagio had walked away from that type of worship, and he just couldn't understand why she couldn't. But her career was just starting, and she was freaking queen! Come on! I mean, obviously you could leave whenever you want to, but don't hold her back. Man, don't hold her back. But the breaking point came in September 1954, filming The Seven-Year-Each, when Marilyn stood over that subway grate where a fan blew her white dress up around her thighs. And take after take the crowd cheered. But somewhere in the crowd stood Demagio, watching strangers lear at what he considered his. And the fight that night was reportedly savage. On October 6, 1954, Marilyn filed for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty, as you showed queen. And I mean, you know, Joe Demagio can be with whoever he wants to be. I feel like this is the right thing where it's like, "You can prefer a woman that's not a movie star, but don't make her feel bad. You married a fucking movie star sex symbol, like a amazing woman, like, what do you want? You know, just classic controlling man. Come on." So Marilyn would pick herself back up, and she would eventually meet someone else. Arthur Miller. And Arthur Miller was everything Demagio wasn't. Intellectual, politically engaged, and celebrated for his mind. And he had written death of a salesman and the crucible. And they first met in 1951, introduced by Elia Kazan, but Miller was married back then. And when Marilyn moved to New York in 1955, they reconnected. And for her, Miller represented validation. One of America's great literary minds seeing pass the image to the woman beneath. And when Variety announced their relationship with Egghead Wed's Hourglass, it's an odd title, but okay, the crude headline captured how the world saw them. And they married twice in June 1956, a civil ceremony on the 29th, and a Jewish ceremony two days later. And Marilyn had converted to Judaism without pressure from Miller, keeping Amazusa on her door, and a menorah that played Hattikva. And Egypt would ban her films because of this conversion. And she would describe herself as a Jewish atheist for the rest of her life. So on their honeymoon in England, filming the Prince and the Showgirl, she found Miller's diary. And the specific contents have never been fully revealed, but Miller had written something expressing disappointment, doubts about who she really was, perhaps frustration with her insecurities. And the man she married because he saw the real her had apparently found the real her lacking. And the marriage never fully recovered. And Marilyn suffered multiple miscarriages, each deepening her depression. And she would eventually become increasingly dependent on barbiturates to sleep. And then fetamines to wake and alcohol to blur her pain. So in 1960, filming Let's Make Love, she had in a fair with co-star Yves Monten, sorry if I'm saying that wrong. And both were married and the affair was passionate but brief. And Monten returned to his wife, and Marilyn was left more alone than before. And the marriage ended January 24th, 1961. And Miller eventually would not even attend her funeral. So after that divorce, her career would continue, but she would finally meet the famous JFK in 1954, introduced by Peter Lawford, who was married to Kennedy's sister Patricia. And the most plausible account of intimacy with the president places it on March 24th, 1962 at Bing Crosby's Palm Springs estate. And her mature Ralph Roberts claimed she called him that night with JFK's voice audible in the background. And Roberts said Marilyn told him this was their only encounter, a single night, not an ongoing affair. But the night that cemented her Kennedy connection in public imagination came on May 19th, 1962 at Madison Square Garden celebrating JFK's 45th birthday. And Marilyn wore a dress so tight and nude colored, she'd appeared to be wearing nothing. A sheer gown encrusted with rhinestones looked like they were sewn onto her body, and her delivery of "Happy birthday to you" was slow, sensual, and almost parodic. Um, they hadn't seen it, you need to go watch it, immediately. And Kennedy would joke afterwards saying, "I can now retire from politics after having had happy birthday sung to me in such a sweet wholesome way." Guy was going, "Lew, my wife's here, oh, oh, oh, oh, you know, goddamn." And the only known photograph of Marilyn and JFK together was taken at the afterparty, and Robert Kennedy's involvement is murkier, and Housekeeper Eunice Murray eventually admitted decades later, after years of denials that, of course, Bobby Kennedy was there. And, of course, Bobby Kennedy had an affair with her, so she was. the Kennedy's, really liked Marilyn Monroe, but Murray's shifting accounts make her unreliable, so we don't know for sure. We don't know for sure, that's its own conspiracy theory. But what seems clearer is that in the weeks before Marilyn's death, both Kennedy brothers cut off communication completely, so that makes me think, um, maybe there was something going on, maybe one brother, a jealous of the other brother, being with Marilyn Monroe, but who's to say? We'll get into it. So the Misfits released February 1961, and was supposed to be her triumphant, dramatic Showcase and screenplay by Arthur Miller, Captain America. past including Clark Gable, Montgomery Clifft, and Eli Wallick directed by John Huston. But the shoot was a disaster, and Marilyn was barely functional, hospitalized mid-production, and Miller watched his marriage disintegrate while rewriting scenes to accommodate her in capacity. And Gable would push through despite a heart condition, and he would actually die of a heart attack days after filming wrapped. And his widow would blame Marilyn's chronic lateness. And the finished film is haunted by mortality, and it would be the last completed film for both Monroe and Gable. And something's got to give in 1962 embodied everything wrong with her final years. Cast opposite Dean Martin, she missed a day after day, often incapable of performing when she did appear. And on May 19th, she left the set to sing "Happy Birthday" to the president. And on June 8th, Fox fired her for spectacular absenteeism. So the biggest star of the 1950s was dismissed like a temperamental nobody. But remarkably, she won. And by late June, Fox hired her with a substantial raise. And filming would resume in October, but she would never make another film. So in February 1962, Marilyn purchased the first home she ever owned. 1-2-3-0-5-5th Helena Drive in Brentwood, a Spanish-style property for around $75,000 US. And she decorated it sparsely, never really finishing. A tile at the entrance bore a Latin inscription, "Her sum proficio. I am finishing my journey." And the phrase has haunted biographers since, and she would live there six months before she died. So her primary psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, began treating her in January of 1960. And rather than maintaining clinical distance, he integrated Marilyn into his family life. Believing she needed normal family bonds, her childhood had denied. And he prescribed enormous quantities of medication, barbiturates at three times the maximum recommended dose, while trying to wean her off in nembutol by switching to chloral hydrate. This guy was off his fucking rocker, and her internist Dr. Hyman Engelberg provided additional prescriptions on top of her other prescriptions. And the doctors had agreed to consult each other, but Marilyn learned to manipulate both of them, obtaining medications without the other's knowledge, so she had a way of manipulating both of them as well as them being clearly not great doctors, in my opinion. And in February 1961, she was committed to pain-witness psychiatric clinic in New York, believing she was going for rest. But instead, she found herself in a locked ward placed in a padded cell. And her letter describing the experience was, "Heroing, cement blocks, bars on windows, screaming women, and she threatened self-harm if they didn't release her." But Joe Demagio would rescue her. So despite their divorce, he flew from Florida immediately, demanded her release, and threatened to tear the building apart. He came through. Demagio came through. And she would be transferred to Columbia Presbyterian for three weeks. Ms. Demagio had never really stopped loving her. And in the months before her death, he was increasingly present, and he may have even proposed remarrying this is something her niece would claim that Marilyn planned to accept. But from early July through August 4, 1962, Marilyn saw Dr. Greenson 27 times in 35 days. And Dr. Engelberg 13 times. The counts of her mental state are contradictory, some describe her as hopeful, energized by her fox victory, others described despair and woman unraveling. And Greenson's notes paint a dark picture, full of fears, depressions, feelings of worthlessness. And she told him she felt like a waf that people only wanted her for what they could get. And both Kennedy brothers had cut off contact, and on the night of August 3rd, she dined at Lascala with Peter Lofford and publicist Pat Nukem. And the dinner was tense, and Nukem stayed overnight. And on the morning of August 4th, Marilyn called a friend about disturbing overnight phone calls. Someone threatening her to "leave Bobby alone, calling her a tramp." So she was naturally nervous and exhausted, and it would be her last full day alive. So the sun rose over Brentwood on Saturday, August 4th, 1962, promising another perfect Southern California day. And at 1-2-3-0-5, 5th Helena Drive, Marilyn Monroe had barely slept. And she had spent the night tormented by phone calls, at least according to what she told her friend, Jean Carmen, around 6am. An unidentified woman had called repeatedly through the night delivering the same venomous message, quote-unquote "leave Bobby alone." And the caller had used other words too, like "tramp," or "the vocabulary of jealous rage." And Marilyn was shaken, exhausted, and her nerves frayed before the day had properly begun. And Carmen would remember that she sounded, quote-unquote, "nervous and exhausted." And this was not unusual for her in those final months, but something about this morning felt different. And the threats had rattled her in a way that suggested she took them seriously. And by 8am, Housekeeper Eunice Murray had arrived, and Murray was in unusual presence, hired not through normal channels, but on Dr. Greenson's recommendation, because he wanted someone trustworthy, keeping an eye on his most famous patient. And Murray reported back to Greenson regularly, a surveillance arrangement Marilyn may or may not have fully understood, but the morning unfolded with mundane rhythms. Candyman Norman Jeffries arrived to continue tiling the kitchen floor, and Marilyn drank grapefruit juice, and deliveries came and went, a bedside table, and citrus trees for the garden. And the actress, who had captivated the world, put her around her small house like any other homeowner on a Saturday morning. So Pat Newcombe had slept over the previous night and didn't wake until nearly noon, and this became a point of friction, because Newcombe was Marilyn's publicist and, in theory, her friend. When she emerged having slept soundly, Marilyn's mood curdled, and the star herself had barely slept in the threatening calls, the chronic insomnia, and the cocktail of medications that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. So seeing Newcombe well-rested while she was ragged and exhausted, triggered something, and the two women argued. And the official explanation was jealousy over sleep, but those who knew the situation suspected the real tension lay elsewhere, because Newcombe had connections to the Kennedy family, and she knew things about Marilyn's relationship with both brothers. So whatever words passed between them, the friendship was strained to its breaking point. And photographer Lawrence Schiller arrived to discuss business, nude photographs from some things got to give, that might be sold to Playboy, even in her final hours the machinery of her image continued grinding forward. And Dr. Greenson arrived at approximately 4.30pm for what would be their final session. And he found Marilyn in a state that concerned him, because she appeared drugged, sedated, and not quite present, wonder whose fault that is. And he would ask Newcombe to leave, and what transpired between Dr. and patient will never be known with certainty. And Greenson would later tell investigators that Marilyn seemed depressed, but not alarmingly so, because he had seen her in worse states. And he also had seen her rally from dark moods before. So the session lasted several hours, and when Greenson prepared to leave around 7pm, he made two decisions that would haunt him for the rest of his life. First, he asked Murray to stay overnight, a precaution, suggesting he was more worried than his official account admitted. And second, he told Marilyn to take her nembitol and get some rest, and that he left. And then, Joe Demaggio, Jr. would call between 7 and 7.15pm, because the son of Marilyn's second husband had maintained a relationship with her after his father's divorce, and he was calling with news he knew that would please her. He had broken up with a girlfriend Marilyn hadn't approved of, and the conversation was apparently pleasant, even cheerful. And young Demaggio would later tell investigators he detected nothing alarming, no slurring, no despair, nothing to suggest a woman on the verge of death. And this would become one of the central mysteries, because of Marilyn was planning something terrible or already succumbing to a fatal dose of medication, how could she have sounded so normal just hours before she had passed away. And shortly after around 7.40pm, Marilyn telephoned Greenson to share the good news about young Joe's breakup, and her mood, again, seemed improved, and Greenson would remember being reassured, as the Marilyn who rang up him sounded better than the one he had left an hour earlier. And then, around 8pm, Marilyn retired to her bedroom with her telephone, and the cord stretched under the door, connecting her to the outside world. Though sometime between 7.45pm and 8pm, the exact time is disputed, the telephone rang at Peter Lawford's house, and Marilyn was on the line, and Lawford was hosting a dinner party and had called earlier to invite her, and now she was returning the call, but something was wrong. And her voice sounded strange, "weird" Lawford would later describe it, "fuzzy and sleepy." Her speech was slurred in her words, drifting, and then she said something that would be analyzed for decades, "say goodbye to Pat," she would tell him, referring to his wife Patricia Kennedy, lawford. Quote, "Say goodbye to the president and say goodbye to yourself because you're a nice guy," unquote. And then the line went quiet. Not dead quiet, though. His lawford could hear something on the other end, but Marilyn had stopped speaking. And he called her name, but there was no response. An alarm to lawford tried to call back, but the line was busy, or perhaps simply off the hook. And he called again, and again, unable to get through. And what lawford did next, or rather what he failed to do, would become one of the most controversial aspects of the case. Because he did not drive to Brentwood, he did not call the police. Instead, he called his agent Milton Evans, and asked for advice. And Evans suggested trying to reach Marilyn's doctor or lawyer, and Mickey Rudin, her attorney, would call the house between 9.30 and 10pm. And Eunice Murray answered, and assured him Marilyn was fine. She was in her room. The light was on. Everything was under control. So lawford, reassured by the second-hand report, returned to his dinner party. Which, I mean, I guess makes sense if somebody's calling and reassuring. But even then, I would be like, did you go into the room and check on her? Are you hearing her right now? I don't know. I don't know. It's 2020, but it seems odd. And he would spend the rest of his life regretting that decision. But here is where the official timeline begins to fracture. Because according to Murray's initial account, nothing unusual happened for the next several hours. And she went about her business, assumed Marilyn was sleeping and eventually went to bed herself. And then around 3am, she awoke, sensing something was wrong. And she would walk to Marilyn's bedroom door and saw lights spilling from beneath it. And she knocked, but there was no response. And she tried to handle, but the door was locked. And concerned, Murray called Dr. Greenson, and on his advice, she went outside and looked through the bedroom window. And what she saw through the glass was Marilyn, lying face down on the bed, unclothed, covered partially by a sheet. And the telephone receiver clutched in her outstretched hand. And she was motionless. And Greenson arrived at approximately 3.30am, unable to open the lock door. And he broke a window with the fireplace poker and climbed into the room. And he checked Marilyn's body and found that she was, in fact, deceased. And bigger mortis had already set in and she had been gone for hours at this point. And Dr. Engelberg arrived around 3.50am and officially confirmed the death. And at 4.25am, a full hour after the doctors arrived, someone finally called the police. But this timeline has never made sense. Because of Murray discovered Marilyn unresponsive around midnight, as she initially told some investigators before changing her story, why did she wait over 3 hours to call Greenson? And Murray's account shifted over the years, and she eventually admitted the bedroom door hadn't actually been locked, contradicting her earlier claims. And she admitted there were aspects of the evening she hadn't initially disclosed. Most dramatically, in a 1983 interview with journalist Anthony Summers, later published in his 1985 book, Goddess, she admitted on tape that Robert Kennedy had visited Marilyn's house that afternoon. So the housekeeper hired to watch over Marilyn was also, it seemed, watching over her secrets. So when police finally entered the bedroom, they found a scene described countless times, but never fully explained. Because Marilyn lay face down on her bed, on clothes, with a sheet covering part of her body, and her hand was extended, clutching a telephone receiver as if she had been trying to call someone when death overtook her. Or perhaps the phone had simply been near her hand when she lost consciousness. And the bedside table held a pharmacy's worth of medication, 12 to 15 bottles. And among them was an empty bottle that contained 25 nambutal capsules, prescribed just two days earlier, and a partially empty bottle of chloral hydrate sat nearby, with only 10 capsules remained from a prescription of 50. So if all that medication was taken, it would have been a massive, unsurvivable dose. Because the two drugs together were particularly lethal because each amplified the effects of the other. And there was also no note. And no signs of struggle. And questions were raised about whether she could have taken that many pills without more water present. Because there was only a little glass of water on the counter. And her stomach, when autopsy would prove empty, no visible residue of the dozens of capsules she had supposedly ingested. In the phone records that might have revealed who Marilyn called in her final hours, or who called her, disappeared. Conveniently? And Captain James Hamilton of the LAPD, who had connections to the Kennedy family allegedly confiscated them. And they were never seen again. So at 4.25am, Dr. Engelberg dialed the police and spoke the words that would shock the world. Marilyn Monroe has died. She's committed suicide. And the determination was made before any investigation had occurred, before any autopsy, and before any evidence had been properly examined. And in that first phone call, the narrative was already being established. And within hours, reporters descended on 5th Helena Drive. And the news spread across the country, and then, around the world. The most famous woman of her generation was dead at 36, found alone in her bedroom, clutching a telephone surrounded by empty pill bottles. So the sun rose over Brentwood on Sunday, August 5th, 1962. But for Norma Jean Mortensen, the unwanted child, the orphan, the foster kid, who had stared at the RKO water tower and dreamed the hardest, the journey had ended. And the mystery of how it ended was only beginning. The Sergeant Jack Clemens was the watch commander at the West Los Angeles Police Station when the call came in at 4.25am. A woman was dead at 1.2.305th Helena Drive. And the name meant nothing to him until dispatch added the detail Marilyn Monroe. Clemens arrived within minutes, becoming the first law enforcement officer to view the scene. And what he found, and what he later claimed to have found, would fuel conspiracy theories for decades. Because the bedroom was small, modest by Hollywood standards. And Marilyn lay face down on the bed, her body positioned almost too perfectly. And the staging struck Clemens as "odd." And in his experience, barbiturate overdoses didn't produce such composed death scenes. And victims typically convulsed, vomited and thrashed. So this looked like someone had been arranged and possibly murdered. And Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg were already present, along with Eunice Murray. And Clemens would later claim Murray was operating the washing machine when he entered, a very unusual activity for the middle of the night, suggesting perhaps that evidence was being laundered along with her linens. But Murray would deny this, and the discrepancy was never resolved. But Clemens asked questions and received answers that didn't really add up. On the timeline, discovery around 3.30am, and police called at 4.25am, left nearly an hour on accounted for. And when he pressed, the responses were vague. Phone calls had been made, people had been notified, the delay was unfortunate, but innocent, and the sergeant would leave troubled, but without authority to investigate further. And years later, after retiring, Clemens became one of the most vocal proponents of the murder theory, insisting he had witnessed a cover-up in progress. And his credibility, however, proved complicated. And Clemens was a member of the Police and Fire Research Organization, an anti-communist group, and he was later indicted for conspiracy to libel a state senator and eventually resigned from the force. And whether his claims reflected genuine observations or ideological paranoia remained in an open question. So Dr. Thomas Nogeuchi was 35 years old, and still on probation, one assigned to perform the autopsy on the most famous woman in the world. And it was an unusual choice, a case of this magnitude typically went to the Chief Medical Examiner, Theodore Curfee, the chief coroner, oversaw the proceedings while delegating the actual cutting to his young deputy. And Nogeuchi approached the body with meticulous care. And he weighed her at 117 pounds, and he noticed advanced rigor mortis, consistent with death occurring many hours before discovery. And he examined every inch of her skin for needle marks, checking elbows, forearms between fingers and toes, the scalp, and the thighs, but he would find none, and no puncture wounds anywhere. But he found one superficial bruise on her lower back, insignificant enough to have come from bumping into furniture. And her organs appeared healthy, no signs of violence, no defensive wounds, and nothing to suggest a struggle. And then he opened her stomach, and like we said before, it was empty. And this finding would become one of the most debated aspects of this case. Because Marilyn had supposedly ingested between 40 and 50 barbiturates, enough to fill a small cup. And the pills should have left some residue. But instead, Nogeuchi found nothing but hemorrhaging of the stomach lining, indicating irritation consistent with oral ingestion of a caustic substance. But the contradiction seemed impossible, because how could someone ingest dozens of pills and leave even no trace. And defenders of this theory pointed out that chronic barbiturate users develop accelerated absorption rates, and critics countered that no absorption rate could eliminate all evidence of such a massive dose. And the liver told the different story, because Pento-Barbitol levels measured 13.0 mg, dramatically higher than in the blood, indicating chronic or heavy barbiturate use over an extended period, because Maryland's body had been saturated with these drugs for so long they had accumulated in her organs. And the blood work would reveal what had killed her, if not precisely how it entered her system. Chloral hydrate measured 8.1 mg, 80 parts per million, and the therapeutic range topped out at 30. So the lethal threshold was approximately 100, and Maryland was at 80% of a fatal dose from the stroke, and Pento-Barbitol, the active ingredient in Nebutol, measured 4.5 mg, 45 parts per million, the therapeutic range extending to 12. So lethality began around 40, so she was 12% over the lethal threshold. But the numbers alone didn't capture the full picture, because chloral hydrate and Pento-Barbitol were synergistic, each amplified the other. So taking them together was an addition, it was multiplication, and the combined dose was catastrophically unsurvivably toxic. And Dr. Nokuchi drew samples for further testing, stomach, contents, organs, blood, standard protocol for any questionable death. And these were sent to head toxicologists, Raymond Abernathy for additional analysis. And then they disappeared. Abernathy destroyed them before supplementary tests were completed, and his explanation was bureaucratic. The case had been closed, samples were no longer needed, and storage space was limited. But the destruction meant certain questions could never be answered, because had the drugs been introduced orally? Or was there another route, rectal administration, injection into the muscle tissue, some method that wouldn't leave needle marks? Nokuchi wasn't informed of the destruction until years later, saying, quote, "a great shame." And the loss haunted him for the rest of his career, reoccurring in nightmares where he was accused of complicity in whatever cover-up might have occurred. So coroner Kurfi recognized that determining manner of death required more than physical evidence, and he convened a suicide prevention team, which were psychiatric experts who would examine Maryland's mental health history and render an opinion on whether she was the type of person who might do that. So the team reviewed her records, interviewed her doctors, compiled a psychological profile, and their findings painted a picture of a woman in profound distress. Severe fears, frequent depressions, abrupt mood swings, and she had been taking sedative drugs for years and was well aware of their dangers. But most damningly, this wouldn't be the first time that she would do this, or attempt. Because on more than one occasion, she had taken pills, and too many of them. Only to call for help and be rescued. So the pattern was established, crisis, gesture, salvation. Perhaps she had followed the same pattern on August 4th, ingesting these pills or reaching for the phone, but this time, the rescue hadn't come. She said she might have not actually wanted to do that, and she expected someone to come help her. Which is equally as devastating. So on August 17, 1962, Kurfi announced the official finding. And that is that Marilyn Monroe had died of acute barbiturate poisoning due to ingestion of overdose. So the manner of death was classified a "probable suicide." In the word "probable" was crucial, because it acknowledged uncertainty and left room for doubt, and Noguchi himself was reluctant to rule definitively. But probable suicide became, in the public mind, simply suicide. So the investigation was remarkably cursory by modern standards, and questionable even by 1962 standards. Because reportedly no fingerprints were taken from the pill bottles, and no forensic analysis was conducted on the drinking glass, and the crime scene was not secured, as people wandered freely in and out for hours before and after the police arrived. And the bedroom was cleaned, sheets changed, and potential evidence handled by multiple parties before anyone thought to preserve it. And most critically, Marilyn's phone records vanished, and these records would have shown exactly who she called on her final day, and who called her. And they might have confirmed Peter Lawford's account or contradicted it. And they might have revealed whether Robert Kennedy had been in contact with her. And they might have explained the threatening calls she reported. And Captain James Hamilton of the LAPD Intelligence Division was later identified as the person who confiscated them, and as we said before, Hamilton had the connections to the Kennedy family, and he had provided security services during their Los Angeles visits. And crime reporter Jack Tobin would later claim Hamilton personally told him he possessed, quote, "The telephone history of the last day or two of Marilyn Monroe's life." And the records were never seen again. So Joe Dimascio would be the one to claim Marilyn Monroe's body. Despite their divorce eight years earlier, he had never stopped loving her. And now he stepped forward to handle arrangements, determined to give her in-depth the dignity denied in life. And his first decision was exclusionary, and he banned virtually everyone from Hollywood, studio executives, celebrity friends, industry figures who have profited from her image while failing to protect the woman behind it. And Dimascio held them responsible, saying quote, "morally if not actually for her death." And the service was held on August 8, 1962 at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, and only 31 mourners attended, a startingly small number for the most famous woman in the world. And Dimascio was there with his son, and Marilyn's half-sister Bernice Miracle flew in from Florida, and Dr. Greenson attended with his family, and Lee Strasberg delivered the eulogy. And Arthur Miller did not attend. His third wife was nine months pregnant, and he allegedly sent two bouquets instead. And the casket would be bronze, lined with champagne-colored silk, costing around $25,000 paid by Dimascio. And Marilyn wore a green Emilio Pucci dress, one of her favorites. And her long-time makeup artist, Alan Whitey Snyder, prepared her face, and she'd actually once made him promise that if she died before him, he would do her makeup one final time. And he needed gin to get through it. And the autopsy had damaged her hair, and more Titian's wife Agnes Flanagan used a wig to restore the famous blonde waves. And after the service, Dimascio sat beside her open casket for hours, unable to leave. And when the moment came to close the lid, he broke down completely, kissing her and whispering "I love you" over and over. And he would send roses to her grave three times a week for the next 20 years. So the official investigation concluded within weeks, but closure proved elusive. And almost immediately, alternative theories circulated. The Kennedy connection was whispered in Hollywood circles and discussed in newspaper columns, and investigated by journalists who sensed a larger story. And the inconsistencies, timeline gaps, missing phone records, empty stomach, refused to disappear. And Robert Kennedy's whereabouts on August 4 became a subject of intense speculation. And he was in the Los Angeles area that weekend for a family gathering at Lawford's Beach House. And his wife insisted he was in San Francisco when Maryland died, but witnesses would later claim to have seen him in Brentwood that afternoon and to ring her house. And the FBI, which had maintained a file on Maryland since 1955 due to her connection to Arthur Miller, monitored the conspiracy theories but apparently conducted no investigation. Classic FBI. And if Hoover possessed evidence linking the candidates to her death, it remained locked in private archives. And Eunice Murray quietly left the country for several months after the funeral, traveling to Europe, fueling speculation she had been paid to be unavailable for follow-up questions. And Greenson seemed haunted by his failure to save his most famous patient, because he had seen her that afternoon, recognized her vulnerability, asked Murray to stay overnight precisely because he was worried and still, she had died. And nearly all LAPD files related to Maryland Monroe's death were destroyed in subsequent years, officially in compliance with departmental procedures. Yeah, shit the fuck up. Because the timing was never adequately explained. And routine files were purged periodically, but the death of the most famous woman in the world was hardly routine. And investigators who later sought access found almost nothing. And what survived were fragments. Copies made by interested parties, notes preserved by individual officers and documents that escaped the shredder. And these would become the foundation for every subsequent investigation and every book and every documentary and every attempt to reconstruct what actually happened. And the deconstruction ensured that the full truth could never be established, and whatever secrets those files contained died with them. Up beyond the conspiracy theories, there was simply grief. Because millions of Americans had grown up with Maryland Monroe, watching her on screen, buying magazines with her face, following her marriages and comebacks with the attention usually reserved for family. she had been part of. of the lives in a way that transcended ordinary celebrity. And now she was gone, dead at 36 years old, and the loss felt personal even to people who had never met her. And letters poured into newspapers and fanclubs, and ordinary people tried to articulate what she had meant for beauty, yes, but also her vulnerability, in the sense that behind the glamorous facade was someone who struggled just like they did, because she had made failure look survivable and loneliness look universal, and then failure and loneliness had taken her. Marilyn Monroe had spent her life being wanted and in death she was mourned by a nation that had never truly known her, but felt somehow that they had lost someone essential. But in the immediate aftermath, most Americans accepted the conclusion, but acceptance eroded over time, because the 1960s brought assassinations that shattered public trust in official narratives. And JFK was killed in November 1963, and the Warrens Commission's conclusion satisfied almost no one. And Robert Kennedy fell in 1968, and Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, and Vietnam. Americans learned to distrust what their government told them about death, and we still do today where the fucking Epstein files. But in that climate of suspicion, Marilyn's probable suicide looked less like a careful conclusion and more like a convenient one. And the Kennedy connections that had seemed like gossip in 1962 took on a new significance as the brothers themselves became victims. And if powerful forces had conspired to kill the president and his brother, might those same forces have silenced the woman who knew too much, and the conspiracy theories multiplied and books appeared and documentaries aired, and the official finding was never quite definitive. It became just one theory among many endorsed by authority, but not necessarily by truth. But the conspiracies began before Marilyn Monroe's body was even cold, and in the hours between her death and the official announcement while doctors and housekeeper were still constructing their timeline, whispers had already started circulating through Hollywood, because something wasn't right, and the story didn't add up, and at the center of every widespread theory stood the same family name. Kennedy. And it would take years for these whispers to coalesce into published accusations and decades for them to become a permanent feature on American conspiracy culture. But the essential elements were present from the beginning. The famous actress, the powerful brothers, and the inconvenient woman who knew too much. And it was a narrative that wrote itself requiring only the willingness to believe that official explanations were lies. And whether any of it was true remained six decades later impossible to prove and equally impossible to dismiss. But the affair, or the affairs, that Marilyn allegedly conducted with the Kennedy brothers, President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert became the foundation upon which all the other conspiracy theories were built. And the evidence was substantial, but circumstantial. And Marilyn had known both brothers since the mid-1950s, moving in the same social circles through Peter Lofford, and she had attended parties at the Lofford Beach House, been photographed at political events, and cultivated connections to power that went beyond mere celebrity. And the happy birthday Mr. President performance crystallized public suspicion into something approaching certainty, because no woman saying to a man that way unless something was happening between them or something did, you know. Some fire was there, some spark was there. It was either a confession or a provocation, or even possibly both. But what actually occurred between Marilyn and JFK remains disputed, and the relationship of the Robert Kennedy was even murkier. Because there was claims that he was there that day visiting Marilyn in her own home. But again, at this point we don't know much else, other than all of this circumstantial evidence. But if the Kennedys, or forces acting on their behalf, had wanted Marilyn dead, what would have driven them to such extremity? As first, there was the threat of exposure. As Marilyn, the theory went, had grown, tired of being used and discarded, and she was angry enough to threaten going public. A press conference was supposedly planned at which she would reveal everything, and this threat was existential for the Kennedys. And JFK's presidency was built partly on his image as a devoted family man, aren't they all? No. And second, there was the question of what Marilyn knew. The red diary became a central artifact of conspiracy lore, a journal in which she allegedly recorded sensitive information gleaned from conversations with the Kennedy brothers, and nuclear secrets and CIA plots to assassinate Castro, and details of the Bay of Pigs disaster, this diary included a lot of insane stuff, allegedly. And Lionel Gradinson, a former coroner's aide, claimed to have seen the diary, and his account was detailed, a red-covered notebook filled with political secrets and intimate confessions. But Gradinson had been fired from the coroner's office for stealing from corpses, and his testimony offered years later in exchange for payment could not be corroborated. And third, there was the simpler matter of reputation. Even without nuclear secrets, a public relationship between a Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe would have been scandalous, because the family had invested too much in their image of Catholic rectitude to allow it to be tarnished. And if Marilyn was murdered, how was it done? Because the empty stomach presented the central puzzle, and she had supposedly swallowed forty, or fifty, capsules, yet no residue remained, and one theory pointed to suppository administration, and Barbrechewitz introduced rectally bypassing the stomach entirely, but this would have required cooperation or incapacitation from the victim. And the injection theory ran into a significant obstacle because no Gucci had examined her body exhaustively for needle marks and found, none. The theories countered that certain sites might have been missed, or that a fine enough needle would leave no visible mark, and the destruction of tissue samples meant microscopic analysis could never be performed. Again, how convenient. And Donald Spado, whose 1993 biography offered the most carefully researched alternative to suicide, proposed accidental death through medical negligence. And his theory held that Marilyn's doctors had failed to coordinate prescriptions, and she had manipulated Engelberg into prescribing a Nebutol without Greenson's knowledge, and that evening she took the Nebutol, and later Greenson unaware of what she had consumed administered a chloral hydrate enema, a treatment method he reportedly used with some patients. And the combination would prove fatal, and in Spado's scenario, the staging of the death scene wasn't a government conspiracy, but a cover-up by two physicians desperate to avoid malpractice consequences. This one's interesting as well, and the timeline discrepancies that changed sheets, the delayed call to police all could be explained by panicked doctors, rather than CIA assassins. But beyond the Kennedys themselves, suspicion fell on the agencies that served and sometimes surrailed them, and the FBI had maintained a file on Marilyn since 1955, like we said before, and opened during her relationship with Arthur Miller, and documents released years later showed agents tracking rumors about her death, but the bureau apparently conducted no investigation, and if Hoover possessed evidence linking the Kennedys to her death, he kept it locked away. And the CIA theories were more lurid, but less substantiated. And Norman Mailer, in his 1973 book, speculated that FBI or CIA rogue elements might have killed her, perhaps revenge for the Bay of Pigs, and Mailer later recanted on 60 minutes admitting he had included it primarily to boost his book sales. Slimey! That's gross, dude. But his honesty didn't prevent the theory from taking on a life of its own. And wiretapping allegations added another layer, and Bernard Spindell, an electronics expert who had worked for the teamsters, claimed he had bugged Marilyn's home on orders from Jimmy Hafe, who wanted evidence of Bobby Kennedys' affair. In Fred Otash, a former LAPD officer and private investigator made similar claims, and he had recordings of her final hours that would prove what really happened. But neither man ever produced these recordings. And the 1982 re-investigation found the wiretapping claims baseless, but the allegations had already embedded themselves into conspiracy lore. And then, organized crime offered another set of suspects. Sam, Giansana, was the boss of the Chicago outfit, a man who moved between gangster circles and show business. And he shared a mistress with JFK, Judith Exner. And he allegedly participated in CIA plots to assassinate Castro. And his connection to Marilyn was tenuous, both had visited Frank Sinatra's, Cal Nevalodge, but evidence they ever met remained circumstantial. And Jimmy Hafe presented a more direct motive. And the teamster's president despised Bobby Kennedys with a passion bordering on obsession. And in a fair with Marilyn properly documented and exposed, might have been a weapon against his enemy. And Milo Sparaglio alleged in 1982 that Hafe and Giansana had conspired to kill Marilyn. And his evidence was, thin, hearsay, speculation, and unverifiable sources. And Darwin Porter claimed five mafia hitmen had entered Marilyn's home, subdued her with chloroform, and had administered a fatal barbiturate animal. And the scenario was cinematically vivid, but supported by nothing resembling credible evidence. But 20 years after Marilyn's death, the question had grown loud enough that authorities could no longer ignore them. And Los Angeles District Attorney John Van DeComp ordered a threshold investigation, a review to determine whether a full criminal investigation was warranted, and lead investigator Ronald H. or Mike Carroll spent more than three months examining documents, interviewing witnesses, and evaluating conspiracy claims. But Carroll's 30-page report was definitive in rejecting murder theories, and the investigation found no credible evidence supporting a murder theory. I mean, they didn't have a lot of stuff to look at because a lot of it got destroyed, but alright, and no Gucci's autopsy was deemed competent. And the probable suicide ruling was reasonably supported by data, and the witnesses who had promoted conspiracy theories were almost without exception on reliable, and the wiretapping allegations were investigated and found false, and the red diary either never existed, or had never been seen by any credible witness, according to these people. And Granninson was dismissed as discredited, and the report acknowledged problems with the original investigation, saying "factual discrepancies" and unanswered questions remained. But the discrepancies and missing evidence did not equal murder necessarily, and Carroll's conclusion was stark, and it was, if Marilyn had been murdered, the crime would have required a massive in-place conspiracy involving everyone at the death scene, the coroner's office, and most of the LAPD officers assigned to the case. And such a conspiracy was theoretically possible, but practically incredible. You know anything about the government now, though? Anything's possible, isn't it? Ivan DeComp permitted himself editorial comment, quote, "On the basis of the known facts permit me to express the faint hope that Marilyn Monroe be permitted to rest in peace." She would not be. As a conspiracy theory survived, partly because their proponents were skilled at presenting discredited evidence as credible revelation. And Robert Slateser claimed to have married Marilyn in a secret Tijuana ceremony in October of 1952, and the marriage, he said. It only three days before being annulled, but it made him a confidant who understood her better than anyone, and based on this knowledge he concluded she was murdered. And the marriage almost certainly never happened. And no documentary evidence supported Slateser's claim. And friends from that period had no memory of such event. But Slateser was persistent and persuasive, and his story provided the foundation for books and documentaries, and the 1982 re-investigation itself. John Minor presented a different credibility problem, because he had been present at Marilyn's autopsy and had interviewed Greenson as part of the original investigation. A decade later, Minor claimed Greenson had played him audio tapes recorded by Marilyn herself. Tapes providing she was not willing to take her own life, but the tapes never surfaced, and Greenson had died by the time Minor was public. And Minor's credibility deteriorated under scrutiny, and he had lost his law license and lied about working for the Kinsey Institute, and gone bankrupt before selling his transcripts. And James Hall claimed to have been an ambulance attendant who responded before her death was officially reported, and in his account she was still alive, a comatose, but breathing, when the ambulance arrived. And Greenson had ejected adrenaline directly into her heart, but the injection killed her. But Hall failed a polygraph test, and he had been paid $40,000 by a tabloid, and his account contradicted the actual ambulance driver, Ken Hunter, who told the 1982 investigation that Marilyn was clearly dead when he arrived, and her body was cold, having been lifeless for quite some time. And all of the conspiracy theories are still debated today. But at the end of the day, Marilyn Monroe had spent her life being looked at. And in death, she could never stop being examined, and autopsy photos analyzed and timeline discrepancies parsed, and witness statements compared in an endless search for the truth that remained perpetually out of reach. The girl who had stared at the RKO water tower and dreamed of becoming a movie star had achieved something beyond stardom, and she had become a permanent American mystery, with her death as famous as her life, and her final hours as scrutinized as any role she had ever played. And the curtain had fallen, but the performance never ended, and the tile at the entrance to her Brentwood home bore a Latin inscription, cursim profissio, "I am finishing my journey," a haunting reminder of what happened. And in the decades since that August night, armies of investigators, journalists, and amateur sleuths have searched for answers in timeline discrepancies and missing phone records and contradictory statements of witnesses who changed their stories with the years. And they have found theories, but they have not found truth, and perhaps they were looking in the wrong place. But the mystery of how Marilyn Monroe died has eclipsed something more important, and that is how she lived, the unwanted child who became the most wanted woman in the world, the girl who educated herself through public libraries and sheer determination, and the actress who outmaneuvered studio executives and built her own production company when women were treated as decorative property in the reader of Dostoyevsky, who let the world believe she was a dumb blonde because she understood how to weaponize under-estimation. She contained multitudes and was reduced to a single image. The white breasts, the subway great, the performance of his irritability that obscured the performer herself. But whatever happened on August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe deserved better than she received. Better from her parents, her husbands and her doctors, and better from a culture that consumed her image while dismissing her humanity, and she absolutely deserved to grow old. So remember the girl at the orphanage window, staring at the studio water tower and dreaming harder than anyone. Norma Jean Mortensen came into this world unwanted, and Marilyn Monroe left it alone. The journey is finished, but the questions remain. And that is that on the life, and very mysterious, unfortunate, and untimely death of Marilyn Monroe. If you guys want me to deep dive into any other topics, let me know down below. I always read the comments, and until then, stay safe, and I'll see your beautiful face in the next one. Alright, bye.