And I realized what an awesome responsibility was ahead of me. I knew that everyone in the world would demand to know what had happened to the beloved Marilyn Monroe. With this responsibility in mind, I began my examination by searching painstakingly with a hand-held magnifying glass for any needle marks which would indicate that drugs had been injected. And I looked as well for any indication of physical violence.
I found no needle marks, and so indicated on the body diagram in the autopsy report. But, interestingly, I did find evidence which might have indicated violence—and I also marked that evidence on the diagram. On Monroe’s lower left back was an area of slight ecchymosis, a dark reddish-blue bruise that results from bleeding into the tissues through injury. And the color of the bruise indicated that it was fresh rather than old.
A bruise means wreckage. Human tissue and blood vessels have broken under the impact of an external blow, and almost immediately the white blood cells, the “soldiers” of the blood, rush to the area to battle and contain this wreckage. They throw off protein digestive enzymes to start this process, and in so doing they change the color of the bruise in stages from dark reddish blue or purple to brown to light brown to yellowish brown to green and yellow, which is the last stage of the bruise before it heals. Thus pathologists can differentiate a fresh ecchymosis from an old one by examining its color.
Monroe’s ecchymosis was dark, which meant it was fresh. But was it connected to her death, or recently incurred in some normal fashion, such as bumping into a table, for example? At the time of the autopsy, I did not believe it was a trauma connected to her death. Its location, just above the hip, and its slight size ruled against violence. I would have expected to find fresh bruises around the throat or skull if Monroe had been a victim of violence. Nevertheless, that fresh bruise on her hip still remains unexplained. And as a possible clue to violence, it is curious that most of the investigative reporters who later became interested in the case failed to pick it up.
The autopsy concluded, I wrote my report, which began:
EXTERNAL EXAMINATION. The unembalmed body is that of a thirty-six-year-old, well-developed, well-nourished Caucasian female weighing 117 pounds and measuring sixty-five and one-half inches in length. The scalp is covered with bleached blonde hair. The eyes are blue … a slight ecchymotic area is noted on the left hip and left side of lower back.
The report then went on to detail my internal examination of Monroe’s cardiovascular, respiratory, liver and biliary, hemic and lymphatic, endocrine, urinary, genital and digestive systems. It was the section on the examination of the digestive system that later created all the controversy, leading conspiracy theorists to say it “proved” that Monroe was murdered. For I found absolutely no visual evidence of pills in the stomach or the small intestine. No residue. No refractile crystals. And yet the evidence of the pill bottles showed that Monroe had swallowed forty to fifty Nembutals and a large number of chloral hydrate pills. Therefore, the murder theorists claimed, Monroe must have been injected with the drugs that killed her.
Just as important, in the subsequent controversy, were the words I wrote at the bottom of the report (I have italicized the important details):
Unembalmed blood is taken for alcohol and barbiturate examination. Liver, kidney, stomach and contents, urine and intestine are saved for further toxicological study.
But even as we waited for the toxicology laboratory to perform those tests, rumors of foul play in Monroe’s death were already escalating. Monroe’s friends and associates said that her career, which had been in a decline, was now on an upswing. So, they insisted, there was no reason for her to have suddenly committed suicide.
In the face of the controversy, Dr. Curphey decided to appoint a panel of psychological experts (quickly dubbed by newspapers “the Suicide Panel") to interview Monroe’s relatives, friends and business associates to determine her psychological background. Was she capable of suicide or not? What were the factors, both tangible and psychological, influencing her behavior at the time she died?
A “suicide panel” was an innovation at that time which has since been copied widely around the nation. Almost always, in suicides, relatives are reluctant to admit, or believe, that their loved one took his own life. Uncertainty doubles their grief, while insurance companies have a vested interest in proving that it was suicide. So a suicide panel can help determine the truth and end controversy and confusion.
Unfortunately, it would not do so in the Monroe case, and for a special reason. The people questioned by the panel were promised confidentiality in order to encourage them to speak openly of intimate matters. And because of the confidentiality pledge, Dr. Curphey ordered that the reports of interviews and the panel’s notes remain closed, as are all such confidential reports. A summary of these findings of the panel stating that Monroe’s death was a suicide was included in the final autopsy report, but the fact that the interview notes have been kept secret for twenty years has, naturally, inspired a charge of an official coverup.
The report from the toxicology laboratory would add even more fuel to the fire. It was delivered to me several hours after I completed my autopsy on Monroe’s body, and as I read it a warning signal immediately sounded in my mind. Along with the liver, I had submitted specimens of blood for alcohol and barbiturate examination. In addition, I had forwarded other organs, including, most importantly, the stomach and its contents, and the intestine, for “further toxicological study.” Now I instantly noted that the lab technicians had not tested the other organs I had sent them. They had examined only the blood and the liver.
Why this failure to perform all the tests, which is a routine procedure in the department today? The evidence found in the analysis of the blood and the liver, together with the empty bottle of Nembutal and the partly empty (forty pills missing out of fifty) bottle of chloral hydrate, pointed so overwhelmingly to suicide that the head toxicologist, Raymond J. Abernathy, apparently felt there was no need to test any further. Specifically, the blood test showed 8.0 mg.% of chloral hydrate, and the liver showed 13.0 mg.% of pentobarbital (Nembutal), both well above fatal dosages.
Still, I should have insisted that all the organs, including the contents of the stomach and segments of the intestine, be analyzed. But I didn’t follow through as I should have. As a junior member of the staff, I didn’t feel I could challenge the department heads on procedures, and the evidence had persuaded me as well as the toxicologists that Marilyn Monroe had ingested a sufficient amount of drugs to cause death.
When the Medical Examiner’s findings were made public a few days later, the media were quick to pick up the omission and I wanted to rectify the mistake, but it was too late. A few weeks later, I asked Abernathy if he had stored the other organs of Monroe’s body that I had forwarded to him. If so, we could still test them. I was disappointed when he said, “I’m sorry, but I disposed of them because we had closed the case,” for I knew the media would charge a cover-up. I was right. A variety of murder theories would spring up almost instantly—and persist even today.
Operating on the assumption that Marilyn Monroe and a “diary” in her possession were somehow a threat to Robert Kennedy, the murder theorists began with the fact that Kennedy flew into San Francisco the day before Marilyn Monroe died, Friday, August 3, 1962. He was scheduled to make a speech to the bar association the following Monday night. But the murder theorists wondered why he arrived Friday for a speech three days later. FBI files showing that he and his family spent the weekend at the Gilroy, California, ranch of Mr. and Mrs. John Bates were dismissed as an FBI cover-up. They believed that Kennedy, instead, flew to Los Angeles to supervise the murder of Marilyn Monroe, and they pointed suspiciously to her telephone call from Peter Lawford, the implication being that there was only Lawford’s word for what was really said in that last telephone call. Robert Slatzer reportedly interviewed a woman living on the same block as Monroe who claimed to have seen Kennedy and a man with a doctor’s bag enter Monroe’
s house Saturday afternoon. And according to Slatzer’s scenario, the man with the doctor’s bag injected Monroe with the drugs that killed her.
“Evidence” that Kennedy directly participated in Monroe’s murder was so bizarre that even other murder theorists rejected it. Many had a second theory. They believed that the murder was accomplished by some rogue elements in the CIA worried about information that Kennedy had given Monroe which she kept in a diary. And there was some supporting evidence for the existence of a diary. In 1962 Lionel Grandison was deputy coroner with clerical functions. It was he who signed Monroe’s death certificate. And he claimed that he actually saw the diary in the Medical Examiner’s Office, and that it disappeared the next day.
Other so-called “proof” that Kennedy had in some way participated in Monroe’s death was offered by the famous wiretapper Bernie Spindel. Spindel had been gathering evidence against Kennedy on behalf of teamster union boss Jimmy Hoffa when his house was raided by the New York District Attorney’s Office. Murder theorists pointed out that Kennedy was a New York senator at the time, and a friend of the New York County DA, Frank Hogan. They believed that Kennedy was behind the raid. Spindel’s tapes, seized in the raid, were not returned, and Spindel officially filed a lawsuit to recover “tapes and evidence concerning the causes of death of Marilyn Monroe which strongly suggest that the officially reported circumstances of her demise were erroneous.”
There was a third scenario offered by conspiracy advocates, in which Kennedy was not the murderer but a potential victim of blackmail. In this version, killers slipped into Monroe’s bedroom at night, injected her with drugs and forced her to telephone Kennedy at Peter Lawford’s house and say that she was committing suicide. Kennedy was then supposed to rush to her side to rescue her—and find himself in a blackmail trap. But Kennedy didn’t come, the trap failed, and Monroe was left to die.
All of these disparate murder theories shared one common thread: Marilyn Monroe had died by injection, not by swallowing pills. And to prove that charge, everyone pointed to the autopsy I had performed.
Allegations against my autopsy report came from several different quarters. Dr. Sidney B. Weinberg, then Chief Medical Examiner of Suffolk County, New York, now retired, was quoted by journalist George Carpozi, Jr., as saying, “The evidence points to all of the classic features of a homicide, much more so than a suicide.” Another journalist, Anthony Scaduto, called it “one of the weirdest autopsy reports ever confected.”
Norman Mailer was quoted about my motives: “The word was out to keep this thing a suicide, not to make it a murder… . If you’re the coroner and you feel the official mood is to find evidence of a suicide, you wouldn’t particularly want to come in with murder.” But Slatzer went farthest of all in his attack. He claimed my official report was a fake. Allegedly, Los Angeles Police Department sources told him that the real autopsy report had been suppressed and a fraudulent copy made up by me and substituted.
For twenty years I had answered these criticisms only in general terms. But, now, on November 4, 1982, I had an opportunity to respond in detail under the questioning of the two assistant district attorneys officially investigating the death of Marilyn Monroe.
My autopsy findings on Monroe’s digestive system had stated these facts (I’ve italicized the controversial details):
The esophagus has a longitudinal folding mucosa [the inner lining of the organ]. The stomach is almost completely empty. The volume is estimated to be no more than 20 cc. No residue of the pills is noted. A smear made from the gastric contents examined under the polarized microscope shows no refractile crystals. The mucosa shows marked congestion and submucosal petechial [pinpoint] hemorrhage diffusely. The duodenum shows no ulcer. The contents of the duodenum are also examined under the polarized microscope and show no refractile crystals. The remainder of the small intestine shows no gross abnormality. The colon shows marked congestion and purplish discoloration.
The investigators were interested in the answers to three questions stemming from this section of my report:
Question 1. The autopsy indicated that the stomach was “almost completely empty.” How could the stomach be empty if Monroe had swallowed a great mass of pills?
Question 2. Dr. Weinberg, as quoted by Carpozi, had stated, “With such a massive dose of barbiturates in her system, you must expect to find at least some partially digested capsules or tablets in the stomach, … some powdery material adhering to the stomach lining, and oftentimes—as in this case—you would expect a corrosive or raw, red appearance on the stomach lining.” Why weren’t there partially digested capsules, powdery material or a raw, red appearance on the stomach lining?
Question 3. If Monroe had swallowed a great quantity of yellow Nembutals, the yellow dye from the jackets of the capsules must have been found on the linings of her throat, esophagus and stomach. Why was no such yellow stain noted?
A fourth question concerned my external examination of Monroe’s body. It was known that Dr. Greenson routinely injected Monroe the day before she died. Yet I had found no needle mark on her body. Why?
To answer the first question concerning the empty stomach, I began my explanation with a common experience. Sometimes when you eat exotic food that doesn’t “agree” with you, you suffer from indigestion, which means that the stomach is rejecting the food and not passing it into the intestines easily. But when you swallow food like steak that you’ve eaten for years, there is no indigestion, because the food is passed smoothly on to the intestines.
So it is with pills swallowed by habitual drug users. Marilyn Monroe had been a heavy user of sleeping pills and chloral hydrate for years. Her stomach was familiar with those pills, and they were digested and “dumped” into the intestinal tract. In my experience with pill addicts, I expected to see no visible evidence of pills—a fact that only proved they were addicts, not that they were murder victims who had been injected.
In response to the second question and Dr. Weinberg’s suggestion that, in addition to partially digested capsules and powder, one would also expect to find a raw, red appearance on the stomach lining, I replied that my autopsy report had stated that the “mucosa shows petechial hemorrhage diffusely.” In other words, beneath the stomach lining (the mucosa), there was in fact widespread pinpoint hemorrhaging—the raw, red appearance Dr. Weinberg suggested.
I told the investigators that the third question, relating to the claim that the yellow dye from Nembutal should have stained the inner linings of the throat and the stomach, had obviously been raised by a layman who had no familiarity with Nembutal. As a medical examiner I had come to know this pill very well. It seemed to be one of the favorite drugs for those who wanted to commit suicide. And I pointed out that if you take a yellow Nembutal and touch it to your lips to moisten it, then rub your finger over the wet pill, you’ll find that the yellow color does not rub off. Nembutal is made with a capsule whose color does not run when it is swallowed.
As to the fourth question, why no needle marks were found when it was known that Dr. Greenson had injected Monroe, I said that punctures made by fine surgical needles, such as Dr. Greenson used, heal within hours and become invisible. Only fresh punctures can be discovered. Dr. Greenson’s injection had been made almost forty-eight hours before the autopsy. Therefore, I found no fresh puncture marks.
At the end of our interview, the assistant district attorneys told me that a chief medical examiner from another jurisdiction would be asked to interpret the original autopsy, along with my explanations of details. I was impressed by the thoroughness of their investigation into the twenty-year-old death.
Only three days after my visit to the DA’s Office, I was driving through Brentwood on my way to Pasadena, where I was to teach a class in the art of Japanese cooking, one of my hobbies. I was only a mile or so from Marilyn Monroe’s house when I heard the news announcer on the car radio say, “James Hall, who was an ambulance attendant in 1962, says that Marilyn Monroe was murdered right before h
is eyes. In an exclusive story in the newspaper the Globe, he was quoted as stating that he was actually reviving Monroe when he was pushed aside by a ‘doctor’ who injected a mysterious fluid directly into her heart and killed her.”
Sprinklers on lovely green lawns, elegant palm trees along the boulevard, a lonely jogger moving happily in the sun—and another Marilyn Monroe murder story on the radio inside my car. I almost expected the announcer to say that the killer “doctor” was named Noguchi—and relaxed only when I heard that he had a mustache, longish sideburns and a pockmarked face. Not me.
Marilyn Monroe would have been fifty-six in 1982—and yet the image of that lovely young actress, her hand stretching to the telephone in death, still seared the minds of Americans. Would the rumors and the speculations never stop? I wondered. Not only the “doctor” who supposedly injected Monroe, seen by the ambulance attendant, but even more outlandish tales. Sample: Monroe was drugged at Frank Sinatra’s house in Palm Springs and her body flown to her house in Brentwood. (This one defied both logistics and logic.) Sample: Mrs. Murray had been on Peter Lawford’s payroll ever since the day Monroe died, to keep her quiet about the real facts. Sample: Pat Newcomb, who slept in Monroe’s house the night before she died, was hired by Pierre Salinger on behalf of the Kennedys, after Monroe’s death, to silence her.
I sincerely hoped that when the DA’s investigation was completed, these fantastic rumors, and many others, would be stilled. And perhaps the legitimate questions which still haunted her case would be answered.
The LA District Attorney’s Office released the report of its investigation into the death of Marilyn Monroe in December of 1982, and its conclusion drew wide circulation.
The Coroner Series Page 6