How did Marilyn Monroe die: A Netflix documentary claims to have unearthed tapes we haven't heard before

Netflix is releasing 'The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes' on April 27. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

At 3 am on August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatrist Ralph Greenson received an anxious call from the 36-year-old actor’s housekeeper Eunice Murray—Monroe was not opening the door of her bedroom in spite of repeated knocking; something seemed wrong. Greenson rushed to Monroe’s home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, broke a window to enter the bedroom and found her naked, lying face down on her bed, a phone “clutched fiercely” in her hand and an empty bottle of the sedative Nembutal by her. She was dead.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office ruled the death as a probable suicide, given that Monroe had a history of depression, drug and alcohol overdoses and a couple of previous suicide attempts. No evidence of foul play was found, and accidental overdose was ruled out because of the large amount of pills she had ingested.

Yet, even 60 years after her death, a significantly large number of people believe neither the suicide explanation nor the accidental overdose one. This is because of the names that pop up in any discussion of the last year of her life—US president John F. Kennedy (JFK) , his brother and US attorney general Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), controversial Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover, America’s biggest Mafia boss Sam “Momo” Giancana and the country’s most powerful labour union leader Jimmy Hoffa, who had deep links with organized crime.

On 27 April, Netflix will release a documentary on Monroe’s death, The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes. It has already created much anticipation and the trailer is satisfyingly intriguing.

It begins with Monroe saying: “How do you write one’s life story? The true things rarely get into circulation. It’s usually the false things.”

It then mentions that in 1982, the Los Angeles district attorney decided to reopen the case—though the viewer is not told that this investigation confirmed the original verdict.

An unnamed man says: “I can’t say anything and I knew it all.”

Another adds, “Marilyn and the truth, it’s like getting into the lion’s den and I indeed found out things which had not been found out before.”

The tagline of the film is: “The brighter the star, the darker the truth.”

The trailer ends by quickly ticking all the boxes: conspiracy, FBI, wiretaps, drugs, Hoover, communism, JFK, RFK, cover up.

The film’s makers claim that they gained access to the tapes of some conversations that uncover till-now unknown facts about the star’s last days.

But why we should we be interested in the death of a film star that took place before 88 percent of the current world population was even born?
One, because she was, at that time, one of the world’s most popular actors and the first truly global sex symbol. Her incandescent screen presence is unmatched in the history of cinema (Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How To Marry A Millionaire) and even as she astounded and aroused people across the planet, she conveyed an air of guileless innocence that is absolutely unique. She was and remains one of a kind.

Two, because we love conspiracy theories, especially when they are about the deaths of beautiful people. Think Princes Diana (for those who believe that she did not die in a random motor accident, I recommend The Murder of Princess Diana by Noel Botham), or Sushant Singh Rajput. These theories, with their masses of credible-at-first-sight evidence confirm our innate suspicion that we live in a world where the rich and the powerful control information and narrative. Our lives are hemmed by laws and moral confusion. They control the laws and manipulate our vacillations.

We don’t yet know what the recordings in The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe reveal, but much of the film seems to draw from British journalist Anthony Summers’ best-selling biography Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe—originally published in 1985, with an updated version released recently to time with the Netflix release.

Summers interviewed 650 people to build a complex web of conspiracies. Other Monroe experts have disputed his methods and conclusions, but Goddess remains the most comprehensive effort to compile and connect the “pieces of evidence”.

That Monroe had affairs with both the Kennedys is accepted by many researchers. According to Summers, a few days before she died, she called a long-time friend Arthur James and asked: “What can I do about ‘He’?” James believed that “He” was President Kennedy. She then complained that Robert Kennedy had “cut her off cold”. But on August 3, the day before she died, she phoned another friend, whom she supposedly told that she was “very much in love and was going to marry Bobby Kennedy”. The same day she told yet another friend that she had been trying in vain to reach RFK on the phone. She would, she said, call the Kennedys’ brother-in-law, actor

Peter Lawford, to get information. Lawford later confirmed that she did call him. Yet, she had also told columnist Sidney Skolsky that she expected to “be with” JFK during his forthcoming visit to Los Angeles.

JFK, RFK—yes, this is confusing. We also know that Monroe had psychological issues—she had even spent time in a mental ward—and was under strong medication which may have impaired her perceptions and judgement.

Early on August 4, a distressed Marilyn apparently spoke to a former neighbour, saying that an anonymous woman kept calling her and warning: “Leave Bobby alone, you tramp. Leave Bobby alone.” Skolsky called her later that day, and worried by her recent talk about the Kennedys, he had his daughter Steffi listen in. Steffi told Summers that Monroe said she expected to see one of the Kennedys that evening.

Around 4:30 pm, she phoned her psychiatrist Dr Greenson. He came over to her home, and later told the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team that he found her depressed and “in a rage”. Monroe, he said, had recently had sexual relationships with “extremely important men in government...at the highest level.” Monroe had told him that she had been expecting to see one of the “very important people” that night, but he had called off the tryst.

At 9:30 pm, Monroe called Sydney Guilaroff, her favourite hairdresser and close friend. It was only 34 years later, in his autobiography, that Guilaroff revealed what transpired. She told him that RFK had visited her, had “threatened and yelled at her”, and told her that not only would he not marry her, as she had hoped, but their relationship was over.

According to Guilaroff, Monroe said she had then told RFK that if he dumped her, she would “go public” and hold a tell-all press conference about all the “(dangerous) secrets about what has gone on in Washington”, secrets she had come to know from the Kennedys’ pillow talks.

Shortly before that midnight, Monroe was dead. The press conference she had threatened to hold would never take place.

Investigators for the Los Angeles district attorney, reviewing the circumstances of Marilyn’s death in the 1980s, were blocked by the FBI when they asked to see certain material in the agency’s possession.

Summers, using the Freedom of Information Act, came to know that the FBI had kept a “105” file on Marilyn. The “105” code meant that the person being investigated was suspected of undesirable political views, which, for FBI boss Hoover, meant Communist.

Summers persisted for years and finally got access to the file (with minor redactions) for the updated version of his book. Parts of the file were marked “Security Matter—Communist.” A report dated July 13, 1962, less than a month before Monroe’s death, quoted an unnamed source that at a recent lunch with the Lawfords and JFK, “she had asked the president a lot of socially significant questions concerning the morality of atomic testing... Monroe’s views are very positively and concisely leftist”.

Interestingly, JFK had not been in California around that time, but RFK had, and was to travel to Nevada two weeks later to witness an atomic test. This was also the exact period when Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev began secretly shipping ballistic missiles to Cuba, which would lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world would come to the brink of nuclear war. The FBI perhaps feared that some Soviet intelligence operative was cultivating Monroe, given her closeness to the Kennedys.

As soon as JFK became president, attorney general RFK had launched an all-out attack on the Mafia. The FBI officially reported to him, though Hoover, a bit of a nutcase who ran the agency with an iron hand, detested the Kennedys and had for many years denied the existence of the Mafia. In July 1961, 13 months before Monroe’s death, Sam Giancana, the Mafia’s “boss of bosses”, was confronted by a team of FBI agents. Giancana was enraged and according to the FBI report, said: “I know all about the Kennedys...and one of these days we are going to tell all. You lit a fire tonight that will never go out. You’ll rue the day.”

Six months later, according to FBI wiretap records, Giancana asked his Hollywood henchman Johnny Roselli to organise electronic surveillance to find hard dirt on the Kennedys. But one of his allies—and a fellow enemy of the brothers—Jimmy Hoffa, the crooked union leader, was already on the job. He had already got the Lawfords’ house bugged, since both brothers visited them when they came down to Los Angeles, and Monroe’s home.

One of Hoffa’s listeners told Summers that he recorded several occasions of JFK and Monroe chatting and having sex. About 25-30 tapes were shipped to New York to Bernard Spindel, chief eavesdropper for both Hoffa and Giancana.

Hoover too had been getting increasingly worried about JFK’s philandering —while RFK was generally seen as a prudish and devout Catholic, JFK organised sex parties even inside the White House. One, the prurient Hoover loved collecting sex tapes of people he didn’t like—among them, Martin Luther King. Two, JFK’s peccadilloes could pose a serious national security risk.

In a case of epic-scale irony, FBI asked Spindel to bug Monroe’s home and phones, which he did. So both the Mafia and the FBI were now listening to her conversations.

Paris Theodore, a Spindel associate, told Summers that he had heard the recording of what went on in Monroe’s home the night she died. Apparently, RFK visited her twice. Theodore claimed that he heard RFK and Monroe shouting and screaming at each other—RFK wanted to end their relationship and Monroe was furious.

According to Theodore, Kennedy was also looking for something, maybe a diary that Monroe claimed to maintain. Monroe refused and Kennedy stormed out, to return some time later with Lawford. Theodore claimed that Kennedy said words to the effect of: “We have to know. It’s important to the family. We can make any arrangements you want, but we must find it.” Monroe, meanwhile, was screaming at them, ordering them out of her house.

Then apparently, there were “thumping, bumping noises, then muffled, calming sounds”. It sounded, Theodore said, “as though the actress was being put on the bed.” Summers believes that an agitated Monroe may have gulped down two dozen of her prescribed sedatives—a lethal dose—at that point and the two men abetted this and hushed it all up with the help of her housekeeper Eunice Murray. But why was Monroe naked when her body was discovered?

Theodore also claimed that he heard Kennedy and Lawford discussing how Kennedy could get out of town quietly. It was arranged that a call would be made to Monroe’s number once Kennedy had left the area. The final sound on the tape was that of a telephone ringing, and being picked up, but whoever picked up, stayed silent. Monroe’s corpse was found with a phone in her hand.

Summers says that an FBI agent who investigated the death, told him that some of Monroe’s phone records seemed to have been deleted by her phone company, and he speculated that the order to do so must have come from the top—possibly the attorney general or the president himself.

Among other theories is Hoover killing Monroe because he suspected her to be a willing or unwitting asset of Soviet intelligence who was sleeping with the two most powerful men in the US government and could be privy to state secrets. There has also been speculation that the Mafia, perhaps in collaboration with the CIA, did the job, since both were enraged about Kennedy’s bungling of the CIA-run and Mafia-financed invasion of communist Cuba at the Bay of Pigs the year before—the Mafia had had thriving casino and nightclub operations in Cuba, which were shut down by Fidel Castro the moment he seized power. If Monroe’s phone records were indeed selectively deleted, both the FBI and the CIA had the power to get it done.

What are these “unheard tapes” that Netflix is touting in the title of its new documentary? Could they be the ones that Spindel had received from his men? In 1966, the Los Angeles district attorney’s investigators seized Spindel’s tapes. But it is probable that he would have anticipated this and kept copies in some sort of safe custody.

We will know what new evidence that the makers of the latest investigative documentary have unearthed only after the film starts streaming this week. But I find it unlikely that it can solve the mystery unequivocally, if there is at all a mystery. All the principal characters are long dead—JFK was assassinated in 1963 and conspiracy theories abound about that, and Summers himself has written a book that claims it could not have been act of a lone loser called Lee Harvey Oswald. RFK was shot dead by a mentally disturbed Palestinian, Sirhan B. Sirhan, in 1968. Giancana was killed in classic Mafia execution style in 1974, the first shot in the back of the head and then five more. Hoover died of a heart attack in 1972. Spindel died in 1971, while fighting a conviction for illegally surveilling a millionaire’s third wife (his client was the millionaire). Jimmy Hoffa disappeared off the face of the earth in 1975 and was declared “presumed dead” in 1982.

Yet The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe will certainly tap into the world’s obsession with beautiful people whose deaths keep us as morbidly fascinated as their lives had kept us enthralled.