The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (10 page)

Hall was asked to assist in making an Identi-Kit composite drawing of the doctor. The composite drawing bears a likeness to Dr. Greenson. Hall later positively identified Greenson, Newcomb, and Lawford from photographs.

In 1992, James Hall underwent another series of polygraph tests conducted by Don Fraser of Arcadia, California, a state-licensed polygraph examiner who majored in police science at the University of Southern California. Fraser states, “There's no question that James Hall is telling the truth. His story regarding the scene and circumstances of Miss Mon
roe's death is absolutely true. He passed every question in several exhaustive polygraph examinations.”

Clemmons also believed Hall's story. It explained to him why the death scene in the main house seemed disturbed, and why Monroe's body had the appearance of being placed on the bed. “It wasn't natural,” he recently stated. “I knew at the time that the doctors and Mrs. Murray were lying to me. Now I know that they must have moved the body and invented the locked room story. The district attorney wouldn't listen to me. I kept telling them that the death scene was arranged, and they said I was hallucinating.”

In 1993, Liebowitz was located in a Los Angeles suburb living under the name Murray Leib. He admitted, after thirty years of denial, that he had been with Hall on the call to Monroe's residence. Stating that Hall's account was accurate, he then confirmed that Marilyn Monroe had died in the guest cottage.

Shortly before Walter Schaefer retired from the ambulance business he was once again visited by Robert Slatzer. Asked why he had not told the truth about the ambulance calls, Schaefer simply replied, “Eighty percent of my business came from the county and government agencies.” However, Schaefer's explanation was still less than veracious.

The ambulance chase, which began in 1962, finally came to an abrupt and startling conclusion when Clemmons discovered why Walter Schaefer had been such a willing instrument of artful disinformation.

In 1995, Jack Clemmons met Bob Neuman, who had been a pilot for Walter Schaefer. Neuman revealed that in 1947 Schaefer had initiated an air ambulance service located at the San Fernando Valley Airport. During the period of time Neuman was employed by Schaefer in the late fifties and early sixties, the service occasionally made clandestine flights for the U.S. government. Under the pretext of a medical emergency, the air ambulance service could fly into almost any airport in the world. Though Neuman never knew the true identity of many of his passengers, several were easily recognizable. Among them were the president of the United States, the attorney general, and Marilyn Monroe. He recalls flying Marilyn and Jack Kennedy to a private ranch in Idaho in 1961, as well as other flights with the president and women he couldn't identify. There were also several flights to Cal-Neva and Palm Springs in the early sixties, and Neuman specifically recalls piloting Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe to the Bing Crosby ranch in Cabo San Lucas.

Neuman's revelations may also explain what publicist Arthur Jacobs's
wife, Natalie, said to Anthony Summers in 1985, “Arthur absolutely knew about the affair between Marilyn and the president. John Kennedy used to come here—Arthur told me this—very often not in Air Force One, but incognito…. God knows how he did it.”

Today, the Schaefer Air Ambulance Service still soars into the wild blue yonder—ready for any emergency.

W
hile the district attorney's 1982 “threshold investigation” accomplished its purpose in successfully blocking the grand jury inquiry, it proved to be the suasive factor in luring eminent journalist Anthony Summers into “the land of the scorpions.” The editor of London's
Sunday Express
magazine commissioned Summers to write an article concerning the district attorney's investigation. Arriving in September 1982, Summers anticipated that the assignment would be concluded within a matter of weeks. Three years later he completed
Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe
.

Interviewing more than 650 people, Summers created a mesmerizing landmark of investigative reporting telling the revealing story of Monroe's intimate relationships with President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. At the same time he presented a compassionate view of Marilyn Monroe's tragic life.

Dr. Robert Litman of the Suicide Prevention Team was interviewed in June of 1984, and in
Goddess
Summers writes:

I talked to Dr. Robert Litman, one of the two Suicide Prevention Team members who questioned Greenson. He recalls that Greenson was terribly upset, to the extent that Litman felt as much a bereavement counselor as a formal questioner. He had studied under Greenson, respected him greatly, and ‘felt it right not to talk about this until after Dr. Greenson's death.'…Referring to his notes taken in 1962, Litman disclosed:

Monroe's calls to Robert Kennedy at the Justice Department were confirmed by Summers's discovery of the telephone records. The records, which had been recovered from Thad Brown's garage by Daryl Gates, were smuggled from the files of the LAPD Intelligence Division and appeared in
Goddess
. They confirmed Florabel Muir's and Robert Slatzer's allegations of Marilyn's numerous calls to Bobby Kennedy at the Justice Department.

A treasure trove of papers kept by executrix Inez Melson was also found by Summers in a file cabinet stored in the Melson garage. It was the same file cabinet that had been broken into in the guest cottage on the night Marilyn died. Inez had repaired the lock and used it for storing what remained of Marilyn's personal papers. Among the papers in Melson's possession was an undated note to Marilyn from Jean Kennedy Smith that referred to Marilyn and Bobby as “the new item.”

 

While Anthony Summers was preparing
Goddess
for publication, another key witness died. His health destroyed by drink and drugs, Peter Lawford succumbed to liver and kidney failure on Christmas Eve, 1984, at the age of sixty-one. At the end of his life he had been shunned by the film industry, alienated from the Kennedy family, and rebuffed by his friends.
Frank Sinatra went so far as to refuse to do a performance at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas when he learned that Peter Lawford was in the audience. For all his failings, however, Lawford remained loyal to JFK and stuck to the set piece of his story when interviewed by Anthony Summers several months before his death. However, when Lawford was queried on his deathbed by a
Los Angeles Times
reporter about Marilyn Monroe's involvement with the Kennedys, Lawford offered an interesting addendum.

Suddenly sitting up in his bed, he stated, “Even if those things were true, I wouldn't talk about them. That's just the way I am.”

 

Summers's most significant discovery occurred during his interview with Natalie Trundy Jacobs, widow of Monroe's publicist, Arthur Jacobs. Natalie revealed that the alarm regarding Monroe's death was as early as ten forty-five Saturday night—over five and a half hours before Sergeant Jack Clemmons received the call from Dr. Engelberg at four twenty-five Sunday morning.

Natalie recalled that she and her future husband, Arthur Jacobs, were attending a Henry Mancini concert at the Hollywood Bowl when a staff member came to Jacobs's box with an urgent message from Pat Newcomb—Marilyn Monroe was dead.

“We got the news long before it broke,” Natalie Jacobs told Summers. “We left the concert at once and Arthur took me home. He went to Marilyn's house, and I don't think I saw him for two days. He had to fudge the press.”

Natalie Jacobs was absolutely certain that the news of Marilyn's death reached them shortly before the end of the concert. Summers checked the
Los Angeles Times
for that date and found that the Mancini concert had begun at 8:30
P.M.
, and it was established that the concert had concluded by 11
P.M.
Because of the Hollywood Bowl's proximity to a residential neighborhood, a local ordinance required that Bowl concerts must conclude by eleven.

While Guy Hockett had estimated the time of death as occurring between nine-thirty and eleven-thirty Saturday evening, Natalie Jacobs's revelation allowed for a more precise time frame. If Marilyn Monroe was known to be speaking coherently and quite normally with Joe DiMaggio, Jr.; Sidney Guilaroff; Henry Rosenfeld; Jeanne Carmen; and José Bolaños
between 7:30 and 10
P.M.
, and the Bowl concert necessarily concluded by eleven, then the fatal dose of barbiturates was administered at some time shortly after ten and she succumbed at some time prior to eleven.

Natalie Jacobs's disclosure coincided with the Naars' statement that there was no alarm regarding Marilyn until they had returned to their home sometime after ten o'clock. According to the Naars, it was approximately ten-thirty when Peter Lawford called in a panic about Marilyn, stating that she was incoherent, her voice was fading away, and the phone was left off the hook. The Naars' statement further narrowed the time frame—Marilyn Monroe died between ten-thirty and eleven.

Allowing for the events that necessarily took place between ten-thirty and eleven—the ambulance arrival, the attempts at resuscitation, Greenson pronouncing her dead, and the message being delivered to Arthur Jacobs at the Bowl—the time of Monroe's death can be established as occurring close to 10:30
P.M.

The passage of time and the many variants of disinformation circulated in the following decades dulled the startling significance of Natalie Jacobs's disclosure. The revelation that the alarm regarding Monroe's death had gone out as early as 10:45
P.M.
unalterably confirmed that all the key witnesses had conspired to lie in their statements to the police, the coroner's office, and the press.

Natalie Jacobs's statement in 1984 came forward after the conclusion of the 1982 “threshold investigation” by the district attorney; and in 1986, Ronald Carroll, the district attorney's investigator, stated, “Had we known of Natalie Jacobs's statement at the time, it would have cast an entirely different light on our investigation, and perhaps we would have arrived at different conclusions. If her statement proved to be correct, it would have meant that many of the witnesses had lied and there would have inevitably been a full investigation.”

Natalie Jacobs maintains that Pat Newcomb sent the message to Arthur Jacobs at the Hollywood Bowl, but Newcomb stated to the press that she first heard about Marilyn's death when she received a 4
A.M.
phone call from Mickey Rudin.

In Donald Spoto's book
Marilyn Monroe: The Biography
, published by HarperCollins in 1993, Newcomb insists that she first heard the news of Marilyn's death when called at her Beverly Hills apartment by Mickey Rudin at five o'clock Sunday morning. However, the 1962 Beverly Hills phone directory reveals that Pat Newcomb and Natalie Trundy, the future Mrs. Jacobs, were next-door neighbors. Newcomb lived at 150 South
Canon Drive, and Natalie Trundy resided at 152 South Canon Drive. When recently asked if she had discussed Marilyn's death with her neighbor when she returned home from the Bowl, Natalie stated, “Pat Newcomb wasn't home Saturday night, and didn't return to her apartment until late Sunday.”

Where did Newcomb go after driving off from Marilyn's house at approximately 6
P.M.
Saturday? Witnesses attest that she arrived at Peter Lawford's beach house sometime after nine. Bullets Durgom said, “The one thing I remember clearly is Pat Newcomb coming in at maybe nine-thirty. She stood on the step and said, ‘Peter, Marilyn's not coming. She's not feeling well.'” In 1985 Patricia Seaton Lawford, who was Lawford's last wife and lived with him for eleven years, also confirmed that Newcomb was at the beach house that night.

Ambulance driver James Hall's identification of Lawford and Newcomb being at the scene when the ambulance arrived establishes an evident sequence of events.

When the alarming call was received by Lawford, and Marilyn apparently lapsed into unconsciousness, he then called back and found both lines busy. The operator then told him that both lines were off the hook with no conversation taking place. The private line in her bedroom had remained off the hook when Marilyn had set down the receiver in the middle of her conversation with José Bolaños “and never returned.” The extension of the house phone in the guest cottage was also off the hook because she was clutching the receiver in her hand when she lapsed into unconsciousness.

Lawford then called the Naars in a panic and asked Joe to find out what was wrong. Perhaps it was Newcomb who then cautioned Lawford of the danger of having Naar check on Marilyn. Just as Naar was about to leave, Lawford then called back and defused the alarm.

For years Lawford publicly lamented not having rushed over to Marilyn's house, but that is precisely what he did. He and Newcomb raced over to Marilyn's in Lawford's Mercedes to see what was wrong. On a Saturday night between ten and eleven, it was approximately an eight-minute drive from the Lawford beach house to the Monroe residence. Arriving at approximately 10:35
P.M.
, they were there minutes before the ambulance.

In 1992 Mickey Rudin finally admitted that he knew about Monroe's death late Saturday night. Rudin recalled having returned from a dinner party at the home of Mildred Allenberg well before midnight when he
received a call from Ralph Greenson. “I got a call from Romi [Greenson]. He was over there. Marilyn was dead.”

Rudin stated that he drove directly to Marilyn's residence. “Newcomb was there. She was hysterical,” he recalled. Rudin's statements further substantiated James Hall's identification of Greenson as the doctor on the scene and Newcomb as the hysterical woman. According to Hall, Newcomb was there when Marilyn died; and as Natalie Jacobs has maintained, it was Newcomb who then called in the message for Arthur Jacobs at the Hollywood Bowl informing him of Marilyn's death.

On Sunday morning, as Pat Newcomb drove away from Marilyn's house yelling, “Keep shooting, vultures!” she was seated in the passenger seat of Mrs. Murray's Dodge because she had driven there with Lawford and her car was still at his beach house.

The question remains, what occurred in the critical thirty minutes between the time that Marilyn set down the phone in her bedroom while talking to José Bolaños at ten o'clock and her conversation with Lawford at approximately ten-thirty, when she lapsed into unconsciousness while grasping the phone in the guest cottage?

What series of events brought her to the guest cottage, where she was given a “hot shot” and died a quick death?