The Mysterious Death Of Marilyn Monroe

She was more than a star, she was a seductive cocktail of glamour and damage. Could a single bottle of pill have erased her from the screen? On August 5th 1962 at 3:50 AM, a living legend was pronounced dead. Inside Marilyn Monroe's body was a massive overdose of sleeping pills. However their was nothing in her stomach that indicated that she had swallowed anything. Did this American Icon die by her own had and if so was it suicide of an accidental overdose and if not who killed her? In this story the scene was recreated in an effort to finally put to rest over 40 years of speculation. An actress takes part in a life and death experiment with a Doctor present to see how long it would have taken Marilyn to take all the pills she reportedly took. The number of pills she will take represents enough pharmaceuticals to kill several people.

There are 25 pills which are the same size, shape, and color as the Nembutal pills and 5 pills which are the same size, shape, and color as the Choral Hydrate pills Marilyn allegedly took that fateful night. It takes the actress one minute and five seconds to take the pills, so that part is at least possible. The official cause of death was a barbiturate poisoning due to an overdose. But besides the level of drugs found in her blood and liver and the pill bottles found at the scene, there was no clear evidence that Marilyn actually swallowed the pills. What drama play out in that Brentwood bedroom? John Miner, who was a witness to the autopsy, says Marilyn did not die by suicide or accidental overdose and contends that she was the victim of a homicide. Monroe's amorous relationship with both Bobby and John Kennedy have turned into fact for a cottage industry of writers and documentary film makers alike.

The theory goes that Marilyn learns information that the Kennedy's or people protecting them could not trust her to keep and her threats to tell the world what she knew led to desperate attempts to silence her no matter what the cost. There is a second theory that a woman who had attempted suicide before finally succeed in ending her own life. Dr. John Chamberlin, a forensic psychiatrist, says she went out the night before her death and filled a prescription for 25 Nembutal pills while she had plenty of other pills she could have used to make her fall asleep. The third theory is no less tragic. It says that Marilyn took too many pills by mistake. Dr. Robert Litman, a forensic psychiatrist involved in the 1962 investigation says that Marilyn liked the feeling of being under the influence of the sleeping pills.

But it's the rumors of government conspiracy and foul play that have kept this 45 year old mystery alive. There was a window broken to her bedroom and it has been said that that is how someone may have gained access to her bedroom. But Donald Wolfe, author of "The Last Days Of Marilyn Monroe", says that the glass from the window was found on the outside of the house which would mean that the window was broken from the inside. So the entire crime scene was reconstructed to try to duplicate the exact circumstances that were present the night Marilyn died. Crime scene Investigator Steven Staggs was in charge of that. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Chamberlin recreated Marilyn's internal organs in a pharmaceutical lab to find out precisely how the drug killed her with the help of Pharmacologist Nicholas Cozzi.

Also participating in the experiment were two members of the original investigating team, Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Litman and Former District Attorney, John Miner, who believes that Marilyn's death was no accident. The official time line was noted first. On August 4th, a sweltering hot day in Los Angeles, at around 5:00 PM Marilyn Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenston, leaves Marilyn's house after another session to treat her depression. At 7:00 PM Marilyn's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, overheard her taking a call from the son of her ex husband Joe DiMaggio. She said Marilyn sounded upbeat. Sometime between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM Marilyn receives another call, this time from President Kennedy's Brother-In-Law, Peter Lawford. He invited he over for dinner but Marilyn sounded incoherent and declined.

Just after midnight on August 5th, Eunice Murray woke up and saw a light under Marilyn's door. She knocked but got no response. At 3:30 AM Mrs. Murray called Dr. Greenston on a second line. She still couldn't rouse Marilyn. She used a fireplace poker to pull aside a curtain behind a barred window and looked in at Marilyn lying nude on her stomach in bed and is sure that something was very wrong. At 3:40 AM Dr. Greenston arrived and finding the door locked used a fireplace poker to break a window smashing glass into the room. The position of this glass is a hotly debated topic today. He entered the bedroom and found Marilyn motionless, her hands clutching a telephone. At about 3:50 AM, Marilyn's personal physician, Dr. Engleberg arrived and pronounced his patient dead. The police aren't notified for another 35 minutes.

When LAPD Sergeant Jack Clemons arrived at the scene, he found a dozen or more pill bottles on Marilyn's bedside table. One of them, a prescription for 25 Nembutal filled on August 3rd was empty. One week later tests of Marilyn's blood and liver showed huge amounts of the drug, enough to kill at least three people. This was the official story the press reported. A depressed Marilyn committed suicide. The coroner estimated that she had taken as many of 50 Nembutal pills but questions soon emerged. Why did the Medical Examiner find no residue of the pills in her stomach? Why did the Doctors wait so long to call the police? Why was the bedroom not declared a crime scene and scoured for evidence? And there are other questions as well. On the night she died, some unusual activity took Sergeant Clemens to the other end of the house.

Eunice Murray was in the laundry room doing laundry immediately after the two Doctors found Marilyn's body. Right next to the laundry room is the guest room which is the location of perhaps the most celebrated conspiracy theory of all time. Donald Wolfe believes that an ambulance crew had been at the house much earlier in the evening trying to resuscitate Marilyn and that Dr. Greenston had injected adrenaline directly into her heart but hit a rib bone at which time she died. A former ambulance driver first told this story 20 years after her death. Although no one has ever provided a single piece of evidence to support it, but its implication is that Marilyn was murdered. The facts surrounding Marilyn's last hours are as hard to define as the allure that made her a star. In death she captivates as as much as she did in life.

The lack of evidence in Marilyn's file was shocking. The key photographs of her bedroom have been lost. This lack of concrete evidence helps breed conspiracy theories of murder. But there were still some clues left in the file. On August 6th at 10:30 AM Dr Thomas Nagucci performed the autopsy under the watchful eye of Assistant District Attorney, John Minor. The autopsy report still existed at the time of this experiment. Dr. Nagucci used it to take John Minor back in time. On August 6th John Miner observed that the blood had polled on the front of her body and the right side of her face which means she died face down with her head turned to the left. The examiner's first task was to look for signs of trauma but beyond the old surgical scars, there was no sign of violence. The next thing that was done was to check her body for needle marks on her body and there were none which seems to cast doubt on the murder theory.

It also casts doubt on the ambulance driver's story. But if Marilyn had ingested a large number of sleeping pills it would be natural to find residue of the pills in her stomach. But all the Medical examiner found in Marilyn's stomach was about 20cc, or about three tablespoons, of a brown liquid and no pills. But might the liquid itself contain microscopic particles of the pills? But Dr. Nagucci performed that test and it was negative. In fact, John Miner says that there was nothing in her stomach, poisonous or otherwise, that would explain her death. These findings argue against her swallowing a large number of pills. But when the toxicologist analyzed her blood and liver he found a large amount of Chloral Hydrate and a massive overdose of Nembutal, a powerful barbiturate sleeping aid. Why then was no drug residue found in her stomach? The toxicology should have resolved all issues about her death but something went wrong.

For one thing no other organs were examined for drug content. This is a source of frustration for John Miner. Using the remaining photos, the death scene was reconstructed for the experiment. This was done under the guidance of crime scene investigator Steven Staggs. Staggs immediately spotted that the body must have been moved before the police arrived. The witnesses said that the door had been locked from the inside. This supports the theory that Marilyn locked her door before committing suicide. In this theory the Doctor had to break in the window from the outside but conspiracy theorists say that the was glass was on the outside the house and that the scene was staged. The answer to that question is where the glass fell after being broken. During the experiment, Daniel Martinez, a Historian, found the exact same glass as Marilyn had in her house in 1962.

When he took a poker and punched through the glass from the outside glass fell outside as a result of the poker being pulled back through the broken window making it appear that the window was broken from the inside. This is another blow to conspiracy theorists. When Marilyn Monroe died her movie career was on a downward slide. She was living in a sparsely furnished middle class home. She was hardly the person you would expect at the center of a high level conspiracy. Is it possible that the Nembutal and Chloral got into Marilyn's system without her swallowing it? During the autopsy it was also noted that Marilyn's lower colon was emptied. That suggested to John Miner that the barbiturates in Marilyn's system were delivered by enema. This seems to support the conspiracy theory that she was murdered and unlike the injection it seems to fit the evidence. In this scenario, sometime on the evening of August 4th Marilyn takes enough Chloral Hydrate capsules to knock her out.

While she sleeps deeply someone concocts a solution using the Nembutal capsules and administers them via enema. There is one major problem with the suicide theory. Why did Doctor who performed the autopsy not find traces of the capsule or the drug itself in her stomach? Using modern toxicology procedures, Doctor Nicholas Cozzi, a pharmacologist at the Brody School of medicine, set up an unusual experiment. The apparatus he sets up represent Marilyn's stomach and her blood supply. He then administers a deadly dose of Nembutal to Marilyn's digestive system. He first calculates the amount of Nembutal needed for the experiment using the figures from the autopsy and the benefits of modern toxicological science, Cozzi can calculate the actual dose. Rather than the 50 capsules that were initially reported, it turns out to be more like 24. The question then becomes how long would it take for the Nembutal pills to completely dissolve in her stomach.

First, human stomach acid is replicated complete with digestive enzymes. It is then warmed to body temperature. Next, the contents are poured into a glass vessel replicating the stomach and agitated. The same Nembutal capsules were used that Marilyn allegedly took that night and introduced into the stomach vessel. At 10 minute intervals Doctor Cozzi took blood samples to see how fast Marilyn's level of barbiturates rises and continued to until the level was lethal. The point of the experiment was to determine if the capsules would completely dissolve by the time Marilyn was found dead. After 10 minutes not a single remnant of the capsule remained in the stomach and she was still alive. At 20 minutes she had enough barbiturate in her blood to pass out. So the capsule residue was long gone before Marilyn passed out much less before she was dead. This tends to blow the conspiracy theories out of the water.

In fact one finding in the autopsy corroborates the theory that Marilyn swallowed the pills herself. The stomach lining was severely bloodshot. If Marilyn did take the entire bottle of 25 Nembutal the drug would have kicked in within about 20 minutes. An hour after that she went into respiratory distress and died. But just because she took the pills herself doesn't answer the question of whether it was suicide or an accidental overdose. To answer that question one has to enter her mind. Doctor John Chamberlain, a forensic psychiatrist, attempted to do just that. The lack of pictures on the wall or anything else that said Marilyn Monroe lived there is a classic sign of a heavy drug user. However there is no suicide note or pile of mementos next to her bed.

Although the door being locked, when she normally slept with it unlocked, does indicate a suicide, that by itself is not enough evidence to be convincing. In 1962, a team of psychiatrists, led by Doctor Robert Litman was asked to look into the possibility that Marilyn committed suicide as opposed to accidentally taking an overdose. The best they could come up with was possible suicide. In the past when Marilyn had tried suicide she had always let someone know what she was doing. What if she took a few pills and the while waiting for the drug to kick in forgot that she had taken them and took some more. After taking 4 Nembutal, 10 minutes would have had to have passed for enough of the drug to have kicked in to possibly have affected her memory. After 20 minutes she has taken 12 capsules and there is enough Nembutal in her system to render her unconscious so she could have not taken the remaining capsules to have caused her death.

Therefore her accidental overdose could not have been accidental. The most logical explanation is that she took all 24 or 25 Nembutal at one time and therefore committed suicide. But ever since 1962, Assistant District Attorney has doubted the suicide theory. He believes that the Nembutal got in her system by enema. But there is a problem with this theory. For Marilyn to have accepted the enema she would have had to be completely sedated most likely with a large dose of Chloral Hydrate found in her system. But still it is hard to imagine that while sedated she wouldn't simply evacuate the contents of the enema. Marilyn's usual sleeping pill was not Nembutal but Librium which is a much safer drug. In the months before her death she took on average 3 or 4 sleeping pills per day. This further suggests that her intent of taking the Nembutal was to commit suicide.

It is also known that her great grandfather committed suicide as a result of depression and her Grandmother on her Mother's side suffered from depression and her own Mother suffered from depression and psychosis had had to be institutionalized. Depression is known to run in families. Her suicide should have been no surprise. This woman had made three previous suicide attempts but each time she survived by calling for help. The question now becomes did Marilyn attempt to make a call this time since the telephone was found in her hand. Based on her body temperature, the time of death was sometime between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM. That means she must have taken the pills sometime between 8:00 PM and 1:00 AM. The last person she is known to have spoken to was Peter Lawford. That call may have taken place as late as 9:00 PM. If this is the case then Peter Lawford, who died in 1984, may have heard the last words of a screen Icon.

We will never know what those last words were and there will always be questions about how and why Marilyn Monroe died regardless of what the objective evidence shows. That is why it remains one of the great mysteries of Hollywood.