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DEATH THEORIES

Suicide is the official thesis.

Marilyn had largely used drugs in excess, she easily found some and had done, during her lifetime, several suicide attempts.

The partisans of this thesis rely on the difficulties Marilyn suffered from in her career, on her emotional loneliness and on the affronts Robert or John Kennedy or both of them would have made her suffered of.

Thomas Noguchi, the medical examiner, described Marilyn as the typical suicidal candidate.

The fact that Marilyn would have really wanted to commit suicide is another problem, all her previous attempts were help calls and there was always someone to hear her.

The biographers who believe in this theory are Fred Lawrence Guiles ("Marilyn Monroe was suicidal..and this week-end she had reached her point of no return whose only solution was an acting out") and Barbara Leaming ("Her psychiatrist had abandonned her for the evening, and she committed a desperate act").

The murder theories have more partisans.

Many were those who claimed that Marilyn was in an optimistic phase and had no reason to commit suicide. 
A month before her death, she had said to the photographer George Barris  : "As for me, I'm living very happy moments. I see the future and I can't wait to be there".

The Kennedy brothers appear as main suspects, direct or not. It is a very popular theory, urging by the right-wing writer Frank A.Capell, who, from 1964, pointed an accusing finger at Robert Kennedy, helped and encouraged with the "Communist conspiracy".
 

According to some people, Robert Kennedy despaired to keep the silence about Marilyn's affair with him and with President John Kennedy.

Anthony Summers suggests contradictory scenarios : on one hand, he supposed that Robert Kennedy was present on the crime scene, and on the other hand, he claims : "According to every possibilities, no real crime was committed this night, despite the fact that Marilyn's body repatriation to her home was absolutely illegal, and also the destruction by Lawford of every suspicous message".

James Haspiel talks about some mag tapes obtained with wiretaps as evidence that Robert Kennedy suffocated Marilyn himself with a pillow.

Peter Harry Brown and Patte B.Barnham lead to the same conclusion.

Donald Wolfe is convinced that Robert Kennedy fingerprints were everywhere.

As for John Kennedy, suspected to have sent killers to make Marilyn quiet, with his father's methods.

This allegation comes from Milo Speriglio, who has also suggested the Mafia involvement in Marilyn's death.

The theories concerning the Mafia were in vogue in 1992, when Chuck Giancana published a book revealing the involvement of his brother Sam Giancana, in a settling of scores about Marilyn's death, a book openly bound to weaken the Kennedy clan.

The boss of the Mafia, Jimmy Hoffa, Fidel Castro, the CIA, the left-wing dissidents and J.Edgar Hoover, they all, at a moment or another, have been mixed with Marilyn's death rumeur, and even sometimes they have been connected in a weird and unlikely combination compared with the act committed.

Another theory creates suspicion on Dr Ralph Greenson, even if the most part of the reports accused him more of incompetence than of bad intentions.

 

In many versions implying the Kennedys, Greenson is accused to have administrated himself a lethal dose of barbiturates.
 

Donald Spoto thinks that the morale responsability about Marilyn's death falls to Greenson, who administrated himself (or made it done by Eunice Murray) an enema which was going to kill her, because of the big quantity of barbiturates she had already taken : "With the big fear of everybody who was implied, it was just to be a peaceful sleep before death".

The name of Greenson was also mentionned in 1986 when a chauffeur of the Shaefer Ambulance Company claimed that he had resuscitated Marilyn with one of his colleague, but that Greenson had given a fatal injection with a big hypodermic needle.
 

Murder  committed by Robert Kennedy and the Communist conspiracy

A thesis defended by an extreme right-wing reporter, Frank A.Capell in "The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe" (1964).

According to him, every characters gravitating around Marilyn during the last weeks of her life (Robert Kennedy, Eunice Murray, Dr Greenson, Milton Rudin and Pat Newcomb), would have been more or less close to the Communist Party.

His thesis was that Robert Kennedy, having promised to marry Marilyn, had changed his mind, then hired his own "personal gestapo" to get rid of her.
 

Suicide

Thesis defended by Fred Lawrence Guiles in his books "Norma Jeane : the Life of Marilyn Monroe" (1969) and "Legend : the Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe" (1984).

Murder committed by Robert Kennedy or Dr Greenson

Marilyn was about to give a press conference, in order to denounce the Kennedy's brothers behavior toward her (both of them would have promised to marry her). The two brothers would have made her killed, because she threatened them to denounce and ruin their political careers.

According to the police report concerning Marilyn's death, Robert Kennedy would have mentioned not only his own presence at Marilyn's home but also the fact that Dr Greenson would have given her an injection in her armpit.

In 1996, the private detective Milo Speriglio announced that Marilyn had been killed by the Kennedys because she knew the truth about an extra-terrestrial spaceship crash, in Roswell, New Mexico desert, in 1947. 

 

Probable suicide

Thesis defended by the medical examiner who operated Marilyn's autopsy, Dr Thomas Noguchi.

You can read the autopsy report. 

 

Accidental suicide...or murder by Robert Kennedy

Thesis defended by Anthony Summers in "Goddess : the Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe" (1985).

Summers talks about an accidental suicide by overdose of barbiturates, because of the fact that Marilyn had been dropped by Robert Kennedy. He also mentioned a fatal injection given by Dr Greenson, and also a mysterious audio tape where Robert Kennedy and Peter Lawford could be heard killing Marilyn.

Summers talked also about the fact that Marilyn was considered as a National Security threat, because she woud have had some informations about nuclear tests and the Fidel Castro assassination plan.

 

Murder committed by  Robert Kennedy

Peter Harry Brown and Patte B.Barham in "Marilyn : the Last Take" (1992). 

 

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