"Somebody Killed Her"

On August 5, 2005 former Los Angeles County prosecutor John Miner disclosed that he possessed transcripts of private, secret audiotapes Marilyn Monroe had recorded for her trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, several weeks before she died. Highly skeptical that the 36-year-old screen goddess had killed herself with barbiturates, Miner first came to his conclusions after witnessing Monroe's 1962 autopsy, conducted by then Los Angeles deputy medical examiner Dr. Thomas Noguchi. Greenson later invited Miner, who at the time was head of the DA's medical-legal section, to listen to Monroe's tapes on the condition that the doctor-patient confidentiality agreement be respected in perpetuity.

Greenson died in 1979 and is believed to have destroyed the tapes, which makes Miner the only living person who claims to have heard the recordings. Miner describes his transcripts, which he made hours after Greenson played the tapes for him, as "nearly verbatim." If that's true, Monroe, a woman who has ignited pop culture's collective unconscious for more than 50 years, now finally reveals herself in her own "voice" during her final days. She talks frankly about her ex-husbands, about John and Robert Kennedy, about her body as she reaches middle age, about her first orgasms, about why she won't marry Frank Sinatra, about her one-night stand with Joan Crawford and about her tremendous need to be validated as more than the moviegoing world's once and future embodiment of carnality.

Now 87, Miner, whose other famous cases include the investigation of Robert Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, here reveals more about what he saw during the autopsy and the resolution he hopes to provoke by bringing forward his controversial material.

[Q] Playboy: What led to your becoming deputy district attorney for the county of Los Angeles in 1962 and participating in Monroe's autopsy?

[A] Miner: I grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio and came to Los Angeles in 1945 after getting discharged from the service. A very close friend who was working for Cecil B. DeMille got me a job with a formidable title but not a formidable salary as director of public relations for the DeMille Foundation. After a few years DeMille did me a favor by firing me, saying, "Public relations people are whores. Go to school." I went to UCLA and majored in zoology. After some time in Europe and Alaska I came back, went to law school at UCLA and at the same time took courses as a grad student in the medical school. After law school I spent a year in private practice, then took the test for deputy DA and sort of lucked out by placing first and getting the job. I could see that the DA's office needed a lawyer with a good understanding of medical issues in difficult lawsuits and in homicide, child custody and domestic violence cases. The DA at the time, William McKesson, let me create what was called the medical-legal section, which I modestly volunteered to head.

[Q] Playboy: How aware were you of Monroe in 1962?

[A] Miner: I never was a great moviegoer. Some Like It Hot and The Prince and the Showgirl were the only pictures of hers I saw before her death. Didn't she also make a film about--I'm not sure I have the title right--Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?

[Q] Playboy: That's right. How did you like her?

(continued on page 186)Miner(continued from page 79)

[A] Miner: Beautiful. I would have loved to have taken her to bed.

[Q] Playboy: That was a pretty universal response. What do you recall about August 5, 1962, the day Monroe died?

[A] Miner: I got a call from the coroner's office saying that they were going to do an autopsy in the morning--that would be Sunday, August 5--on Marilyn Monroe. I attended all the unnatural-death autopsies I could, which of course the coroner knew. In fact they supplied me with an autopsy schedule every day. I got myself down there, and there was Thomas Noguchi with his patient.

[Q] Playboy: What was it like for you to see this incredibly beautiful young woman lying dead, being attended to by the deputy medical examiner for the county of Los Angeles?

[A] Miner: The main thing when you see all the autopsies I have seen is that you have to develop a sort of defensive reaction. You say to yourself, Well, what are we going to be able to find in this case? You have to be clinical and emotionally detached. But you think to yourself, How sad that a woman so beautiful and talented died. "Too bad," you say. "Now we have to find out what killed her." I'm glad Noguchi did the postmortem, because he's a good, wonderful guy, kind of a very retiring, modest type.

[Q] Playboy: Were you and Noguchi the only ones there?

[A] Miner: No, there's always what's called in the trade a Diener--that's a German term that literally means servant. In pathology it means a nonphysician assistant, an autopsy assistant.

[Q] Playboy: What was out of the ordinary about Monroe's postmortem?

[A] Miner: Lots of things. A preliminary investigative report describes the circumstances the pathologist would want to know about in making a diagnosis. In this case Monroe's body was discovered, and afterward Sergeant Jack Clemmons, the first police officer on the scene, reported it to the authorities. According to department regulations, when a police officer comes on the scene of a death where no one knows the cause, it becomes a crime scene--you put that yellow tape all around the residence and kick everybody out. You're not a homicide investigator, but you call downtown and send for a forensics team. Everybody's been kicked out, and the forensics team inventories everything in the house and dusts everything for fingerprints, looking for anything that might be a weapon or account for what killed the individual.

[Q] Playboy: Was that procedure followed?

[A] Miner: I became aware during the autopsy or immediately thereafter that none of what I just described had been done. This is completely contrary to police regulations. Somebody decided there was not going to be a police investigation.

[Q] Playboy: Did that decision come from Clemmons?

[A] Miner: No, he was told. Way after that Sunday I was on the set of an alleged documentary. Clemmons was there. He had already retired, and I said, "Sergeant, I'd like to talk to you." He said, "I don't want to talk to anybody." Something went on that he didn't want to talk about. Clemmons was well acquainted with police procedure. I think when he was told that it was Monroe's death--this is just a guess--he reported that to a higher authority and was told, "Look, go out there, see what you can see, talk to the people, but you don't want to declare that a crime scene." Clemmons says the person who called in the police was Greenson---

[Q] Playboy: Monroe's psychiatrist, in whom she apparently placed tremendous faith and for whom she apparently made tape recordings of her thoughts and feelings.

[A] Miner: That's right. Clemmons says Greenson said he was calling with respect to Monroe, that she had committed suicide. I don't think that ever happened. It's contrary to the kind of man Greenson was. I think Clemmons said that to cover himself for not having followed department regulations.

[Q] Playboy: What other irregularities were there?

[A] Miner: An autopsy consists of three phases. First is the gross autopsy, which is the surgical procedure. Second is the microscopies: The autopsy surgeon takes specimens of all the organs and tissue and pops them into a jar, and the technicians prepare microscope slides for staining and review by the pathologist. Third is the laboratory phase. Of the three laboratory tests, only two were run. The blood was analyzed; that's where you got the cause of death--massive amounts of the barbiturate Nembutal. The concentration of Nembutal in the liver was 13 percent, which is high. The liver, the chemical laboratory of the body, detoxifies poisonous substances and renders them harmless. Some chloral hydrate [sleeping pills Greenson had prescribed] was also found but not a fatal amount.

[Q] Playboy: What impact would the chloral hydrate have had on Monroe?

[A] Miner: You can say that it rendered her unconscious and, if it did, that it left her an absolutely helpless victim of anyone who wanted to do evil.

[Q] Playboy: What other tests would normally have been run during the laboratory phase?

[A] Miner: The two tests the toxicologist ran were of the blood and liver. There was no analysis of any other body fluid or tissue. All of the specimens that were taken disappeared. The stomach contents, 20 cc of brownish liquid, disappeared. So the only tests made of body specimens were of blood and liver. If the stomach contents had been tested and found to be negative, it would have ruled out any possibility that the barbiturates were swallowed. From the microscopic tests that could have been run during this phase, it might have been possible to determine how the barbiturates got into her body. Somebody was intent on suppressing any objective evidence discrediting the wrong diagnosis of suicide.

[Q] Playboy: So it's your contention that not all of the laboratory-phase tests could be run because the specimens had vanished?

[A] Miner: I was called on a Sunday, and the techs wouldn't even have gotten to the specimens until the following day, but all the specimens disappeared--I'd say by the following day. I've never seen that happen before or since. This was deliberate. Somebody took those specimens and flushed them down the toilet, or God knows what they did with them. So there were no microscopies, no laboratory work on anything other than the blood and liver. Noguchi really couldn't come up with a diagnosis at this point. Somebody wanted the diagnosis of suicide to stick and didn't want any interference by analysis of the scientific evidence.

[Q] Playboy: Apparently anywhere from three to four hours lapsed before Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, and Greenson first phoned the police about her death from her home in Brentwood. What do you think was going on?

[A] Miner: You first have to ask yourself, Here is a woman dead of a massive amount of a barbiturate; how did it get into her? That's the threshold question. The distinguished chief coroner, Dr. Theodore Curphey, announced his verdict at his press conference, saying she swallowed 30 to 40 capsules. There was no indication she used water to swallow the pills, no glass or pitcher in the bedroom where they found her. If the pills had been taken with water, metabolites--the breakdown product of the barbiturates--should have been excreted by the kidneys. If the urine sample had been preserved, we might have found metabolites in the urine, but we didn't. From the examination, we know she had a relatively empty stomach, maybe just two tablespoons of a brownish fluid.

[Q] Playboy: I haven't gotten past the idea of the effort it would take to swallow that many capsules.

[A] Miner: Right. It takes time to swallow 30 or 40 capsules. As soon as the first ones hit her stomach they would start dissolving and start being absorbed, probably before she swallowed all 30 or 40 of them. She would have been unconscious. And if she had swallowed them, she would have been dead before they all dissolved. There would be a residue in her tummy.

[Q] Playboy: But there wasn't?

[A] Miner: None. When a barbiturate is exposed to hydrochloric acid, a normal secretion of the stomach, it crystallizes. I had a wonderful pathologist in Noguchi, who looked at stomach contents under what's called a polarizing microscope, one that enables you to see crystals. No crystals. The notion of oral ingestion is just not supported by fact.

[Q] Playboy: What about injection?

[A] Miner: Noguchi and I both went over that woman's body with a magnifying glass. Literally. Every possible site for a hypodermic injection was inspected, all the orifices and hidden places, between the toes, behind the ears, whatever. How else could the Nembutal have gotten in there? Now we come to the Miner theory, which is supported by some physical evidence. When Noguchi opened the abdomen and studied all segments of the digestive system, the lower colon, or large intestine, had a marked deep purplish color. Later when I began putting things together in my mind with the hindsight that is so much better than foresight, I thought it possible that if the lining of the large intestine had been exposed to a toxic substance--a barbiturate is an organic acid--there could have been an inflammatory response that would account for the discoloration of the gut. Barbiturates are readily dissolvable in water, and as a matter of fact Nembutal is put in a rectal suppository for patients who can't swallow. Now, if some ingenious soul broke open 30 capsules of Nembutal, dissolved that in water, put it in an enema bag, administered it to someone who had consumed enough chloral hydrate to be unconscious--administered this slowly and carefully over a period of time---

[Q] Playboy: How long a period of time are we talking about?

[A] Miner: There's no time test on this, but we know the liver would take time to accumulate 13 percent, so we're probably talking about an hour or so. I don't know for sure. What we do know is that if the barbiturates were administered in that fashion, they would have killed her. No question. By a process of elimination, how else could it have been done? Years ago I ran the theory past two world-class pathologists. One was Dr. Milton Helpern, an old friend who was chief medical examiner for the city of New York, who, unlike our Dr. Curphey in Los Angeles, spent most of his days not in his office but doing autopsies, surveying autopsies or supervising autopsies done by the staff. I also asked Dr. Leopold Breitenecker, medical examiner for the city of Vienna. [Both men are deceased.] Both said this enema theory of mine was plausible.

[Q] Playboy: In your transcript of the tape Monroe made for Greenson, she goes on at length about her fondness for enemas and talks about the actor and Kennedy brother-in-law Peter Lawford's awareness of that.

[A] Miner: Lawford had enema sex parties at his Malibu house. She refers to one of them, at which she had the interesting experience of allegedly having the Countess Du Barry's equipment used on her, if we believe what Lawford told her.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ruled out Monroe self-administering the Nembutal and causing her own death?

[A] Miner: If she administered it, the fluid would have been absorbed as it came in. An effect of Nembutal, when it absorbs, is to render the user unconscious and--whammo!--she would have no more control over the equipment or her body. So she would have been unconscious with all this stuff running out of her before enough of it was absorbed to kill her.

[Q] Playboy: But in your professional capacity you knew of no one except Monroe who died this way, by a poisoned enema?

[A] Miner: That's correct, nor am I aware of others.

[Q] Playboy: Another persistent rumor has it that Monroe kept a diary, detailing among other things her intimacies with John and Robert Kennedy, and that she was threatening to make it public.

[A] Miner: I have to doubt this diary business, but if there was a diary, it has disappeared too. And no suicide note.

[Q] Playboy: What were the circumstances of your first hearing the tapes Monroe made for Greenson?

[A] Miner: I listened to them at his office. I didn't have a tape recorder with me. I wouldn't have used one because it was a very delicate situation.

[Q] Playboy: So you listened to the tapes and took notes?

[A] Miner: No, not at the time. That would have been a bit gauche. I was facing Greenson, and although he didn't say a word, I could see how he was affected by the tapes and their content. While she was saying how she fantasized about the possibility of being adopted by Greenson, tears were pouring down his face.

[Q] Playboy: How many times did you get to hear the tapes?

[A] Miner: Just once. When she said "Good night, Doctor" on the tape, it was "Good night, Doctor" for me, too.

[Q] Playboy: What time of day did you listen to the tapes?

[A] Miner: It was in the late afternoon.

[Q] Playboy: How soon after the day of the autopsy was this?

[A] Miner: I could be a day off, but I would say Wednesday.

[Q] Playboy: How soon after that did you put pen to paper to retain the information?

[A] Miner: That night. While I was writing I could hear her. It was almost a weird kind of experience to hear somebody's voice when that person is not there and can't be talking. But I heard her.

[Q] Playboy: Did Greenson say how recently Monroe had recorded them? If the transcripts are being presented as an indication that she wasn't suicidal, the timing is crucial. Also, since she has been said to have suffered from manic depression, couldn't she have been in a temporary upbeat phase during the taping?

[A] Miner: We know from Anthony Summers's book [Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe] that she purchased a tape recorder I think somewhere around three weeks before her death, so that pretty much tells us it was in that period. Greenson didn't want to talk about himself in relationship to the case because, as he said to me, "The greatest catastrophe that could happen to a psychiatrist professionally is for his patient to kill herself." That's why he let me hear the tapes, because as he pointed out--and it's true--his opinion that she didn't kill herself would be or could be criticized as biased. He wanted me to hear the tapes, on the condition that I would never reveal the content, to make up my own mind from what she had said.

[Q] Playboy: In those transcripts, one hears so much that is intensely personal--her gratitude toward Greenson for helping her learn to achieve orgasm for the first time, her love of his family and her asking him to adopt her, her appraising the assets of her 36-year-old body, her great admiration for John Kennedy.... This is a woman who, just three months before, had sung "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, looking radiant in a sheer, clinging gown.

[A] Miner: That was something, wasn't it? In part of that transcript she says that when she sang for Kennedy that night she got so wet she was afraid it would show. I think that war about her love for the president, but she doesn't say that. Her talking about Clark Gable--I felt she had an almost spiritual relationship with him. And nowhere else have I seen that Gable, during the making of The Misfits, decided to stop hunting animals and make sure his child would be taught to hunt them only with a camera. But those things were important to her.

[Q] Playboy: Some biographers and Monroe experts have criticized Greenson.

[A] Miner: That puts it mildly. He knew this woman better than anybody else, and he said she didn't commit suicide. What she says about herself in the transcript, what she says her thoughts were, what her feelings were, gives you a better understanding of who Monroe was than all the stories other people have written about her.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you decide to bring the private psychiatric transcripts to light on the anniversary of Monroe's death?

[A] Miner: The Los Angeles Times came after me; I didn't go after them. Their writer Robert Welkos--a nice man--is the kind that if you tell him the sun is going to rise in the east tomorrow, he'll wait until morning to see if the sun is rising in the east. He questioned my credibility in every way you can think of. When he began badgering me enough, I said, "I don't give a good goddamn whether or not the Los Angeles Times does a story about this. Leave me alone."

[Q] Playboy: A while ago you spoke of the cover-up surrounding her death. What do you know about the rumors of Monroe and President Kennedy, during and after the filming of the 1961 movie The Misfits, enjoying secret rendezvous at Cal-Neva Lodge, the last of which was purportedly on the weekend of July 27 to 29, just before her death? Or the rumors that Lawford told her at the lodge that she must never again contact the Kennedys and that she attempted suicide or was drugged while there?

[A] Miner: I've heard all those stories. That's all pretty much anecdotal, and I'm very reluctant to place 100 percent credence in anecdotal evidence because that is filtered through the thinking and the mind of the person relating the anecdote. This is just my guess, but I think her feelings for RFK were sort of transplanted from JFK. Having an affair with him made her feel close to his brother.

[Q] Playboy: In 1982 there was an attempt to have the Los Angeles DA thoroughly reexamine the case, but not enough evidence was found to launch a criminal investigation.

[A] Miner: That investigation was conducted by my onetime colleague and old friend, an honest, trustworthy man. All he said in his report was that there were some discrepancies and unanswered questions. That's not good enough. A good investigative report should explain why there are discrepancies and what the unanswered questions are.

[Q] Playboy: What is your response to people who say, "Monroe has been dead for more than 40 years. Why dishonor her memory by dredging up this stuff?"

[A] Miner: It has been said, "Let her rest in peace." How can the woman rest in peace when there's a lie about how she met her death? My response is that Monroe was denied the basic right to which every American, dead or alive, is entitled--due process of law. And what would due process be? An inquest, where people are put on the witness stand and testify under oath, an examination of all discrepancies and unanswered questions, including the question of who is responsible. It would require exhuming the remains to attempt to determine if there is enough identifiable colon tissue to subject to gas chromatography, a forensic technique for identifying substances. If gas chromatography showed that the tissue had been exposed to the barbiturate, you have at least one answer. Somebody killed her. I don't imagine the question of the killer's identity will ever be solved. But there will be a correct diagnosis, and Monroe will not be stigmatized as a suicide for all eternity.

[Q] Playboy: So a large part of your motivation for bringing these transcripts to light is a hope that she will be exonerated?

[A] Miner: If there is to be an autopsy and an inquest and the coroner is forced by reason of the evidence produced thereby to say, "This office made an erroneous diagnosis. We hereby repudiate that diagnosis and change it to homicide at the hands of a person or persons unknown," I think that would make an almost conclusive impact. That's what we owe her. She gave a lot of pleasure and a lot of herself to her public. She got so little in return. Isn't this the least we could do to repay her?

[Q] Playboy: Doesn't the fact that Monroe was interred in a mausoleum bode well for finding clues to her demise?

[A] Miner: That's the key point. Having exhumed several bodies in my career, I can say that if they're buried in the ground, water insists on its right to nuzzle up to the corpse. And it can't here. We have a completely dry setting. I just have the feeling that under those circumstances we're going to find tissue we can examine. But we'll never know until we try. We dig up the remains of dinosaurs that are millions of years old and find that we can draw certain conclusions about them. Forty years isn't that long.

[Q] Playboy: How far are you willing to push to see this case reopened?

[A] Miner: Only three entities I can think of have, what we call in the law, standing to petition the Superior Court of Los Angeles County--the district attorney, the chief medical examiner--coroner and possibly the state attorney general. The other entity would be a family member or members, and she has none. We have to set a fire under one of these people of position. What do they have to lose other than the inertia of officialdom?

"What Marilyn says on those tapes gives you a better understanding of who she really was than all the stories people have written about her," says Miner.