The Matilyn Tapes

MARCH 16, 2007

The conspiracy that killed Marilyn Monroe...

From the Sydney Morning Tribune:

For four decades there have been rumours that Marilyn Monroe's death was not a simple suicide. Now a Los Angeles-based Australian writer and director, Philippe Mora, has uncovered an FBI document that throws up a chilling new scenario.

The screen legend Marilyn Monroe...the FBI report says she "expected to have her stomach pumped out and get sympathy for her suicide attempt", but it suggests she was left to die. Photo: Harold Lloyd/The Harold Lloyd Collection

BOBBY KENNEDY'S affair with the screen idol Marilyn Monroe has been documented, but a secret FBI file suggests the late US attorney-general was aware of - and perhaps even a participant in - a plan "to induce" her suicide.

The detailed three-page report implicates the Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, Monroe's psychiatrist, staff and her publicist in the plot.

The allegations suggest the 36-year-old actress, who had a history of staging attention-seeking suicide attempts, was deliberately given the means to fake another suicide on August 4, 1962. But this time, it is suggested, she was allowed to die as she sought help.

The document, hidden among thousands of pages released under freedom-of-information laws last October, was received by the FBI on October 19, 1964 - two years after her death - and titled simply "ROBERT F KENNEDY".

It was compiled by an unnamed former special agent working for the then Democrat governor of California, Pat Brown, and forwarded to Washington by Curtis Lynum,then head of the San Francisco FBI. Despite a disclaimer that it could not be sourced or authenticated, it was considered important enough to immediately circulate to the FBI's five most senior officers, including director J. Edgar Hoover's right-hand man, Clyde Tolson.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/kennedy-link-to-death/2007/03/16/1173722744304.html for the rest
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THE MARILYN TAPES IS AVAILABLE ON KINDLE FOR $2.99

Here's a piece I wrote in 2007 when a book appeared claiming that Marilyn Monroe was murdered by Bobby Kennedy and his friends.

"BOBBY KENNEDY'S affair with the screen idol Marilyn Monroe has been documented, but a secret FBI file suggests the late US attorney-general was aware of - and perhaps even a participant in - a plan "to induce" her suicide.

"The detailed three-page report implicates the Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, Monroe's psychiatrist, staff and her publicist in the plot."

Ed here: Back in 1994 Tor published a novel of mine about Marilyn Monroe called THE MARILYN TAPES. The premise was that the Kennedy Brothers and J. Edgar Hoover had been audio taping Monroe's bedroom at the time of her death. Both tried desperately to get those tapes. The reels would destroy the Kennedys. Hoover could use them to blackmail Jack and Bobby whom he loathed.

I spent most of 1993 writing the book. For the first and only time I hired a reseracher. She lived in LA and had access to all kinds of Marilyn material. Early on I was intrduced to the Marilyn cult. One guy called me and said that his group would have to "approve" my manuscript before I pubished it. They cared deeply, he said, about her reputation. Other callers told me strange Marilyn stories they wanted to to see in the book. I still don't know how they learned I was writing it. Maybe the researcher told them.

I'm no Marilyn expert. In the course of writing the novel I came to realize that I probably wouldn't have liked her much. I say this based on how much trouble she gave various directors and because she insisted on bringing Lee Strasberg to all the sets of her pictures. She would check every bit of acting she did with him no matter what the director said. That said two or three of the reviews noted how sympathetic my portrait of her was. I felt sorry for her but I think she would have been hell to know (my late friend the actor Kevin McCarthy who knew her disagreed with me).

The problem with all this is that there are so many conspiracy theories any semblance of truth gets lost in the fog. As I was thinking when I wrote the following in response to the news story above.

1) The Kennedy-Lawford-etc. conspiracy has been around for years. Here's why I doubt its validity. Remember Monica Lewinsky? I saw her on Larry King one night where she allowed as how in the month after her first tryst with Clinton she told "only three or four people." Do the math on that. And those three or four people told how many other people? Who needs mass communications when you have this much word of mouth going on. Same with the Kennedy-Lawford theory. You've got a minmum of five people involved in this plot. No group of five people, including Lawford who drank a lot, can keep such a dark secret forever. They're going to share it with somebody. And that somebody is going to share it with somebody else. Etc. It just doesn't work. Sorry.

2) The book that contended that J. Edgar Hoover was a cross-dresser. No way. Made up of whole cloth. The same as the story, passed down through the decades, that Hoover wouldn't go after the Mafia because a mob boss had a photo of J. and Tolson in bed together. Urban legend. It's always put this way: "I didn't see it myself but a buddy of mine knows somebdy who DID see it." False. The even better story is the one about (this may have been the same book) Hoover dressing up in a nifty black cocktail dress for New Year's Eve 1958. Please. The most feared and despised man in Washington, D.C?. People praying for his downfall? And he goes out in a cocktail dress? Sure he does. Hoover and Tolson were probably gay but I wonder if they ever acted on it. My opinion only. In my reading I got the sense that Tolson was a decent guy. Hoover was a ruthless psychotic paranoid prick. Other than that I hold his memory in the highest regard.

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