I’m going to start out by linking my past articles on Rothmiller’s sources for this because I’m not going to dedicate several thousand words on here to talking about what has been discussed before. I always hear “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water,” but these men make such easily debunked claims or claims with absolutely no basis that they are worth less than dog doo-doo.
Also, this book is incredibly repetitive. I’m not going to spend time talking about things we have discussed in the last few blog posts.
TW// This article will talk about her death in detail. If this is not something you are interested in, I completely understand. I am going off the autopsy report which you can read my thoughts on in Part 5.
Claim: In later chapters (75% into the book), the authors claimed that Slatzer muddied the waters due to his claims of a marriage. In this section (59% into the book), they say Slatzer was “a longtime friend.” He’s never debunked by them minus his marriage to Marilyn, with the authors simply saying, “it was all but impossible to verify anything Slatzer…claimed.”
Fact: Slatzer was not a long-time friend. He wasn’t even a friend. He didn’t even write a lot of his book (it was Frank Capell).
Claim: Peter Lawford was snuck out of Los Angeles to Hyannis Port and never interviewed by the police in 1962.
Fact: Peter Lawford was in Los Angeles and wouldn’t go to Hyannis Port for several days. In fact, his wife came back from Hyannis Port for Marilyn’s August 8th funeral, which they were banned from. He was also interviewed by the police and the suicide prevention team to establish what the two of them talked about during their 8 pm phone call on August 4th.
Claim: The 1975 700-page investigation from the LAPD is unavailable, with only 19 pages released to the public.
Fact: The 1975 investigation was not 700 pages, although it was thick. The Los Angeles Times received access to it in 1985, and a lot of it has been released in various books. The authors don’t mention that people were close to her, including Pat Newcomb, were interviewed for it as well. The LAPD also completed a 1982 investigation, which I own in full.
Claim: The 1962 police investigation says she died at 4:25 am.
Fact: The investigation listed the time she was declared dead. The investigation in 1962 placed her death as most likely being around 12:50 am, although modern science puts it anywhere between 1:00-3:30.
Claim: There was no Nembutal in her stomach or evidence of her taking it orally.
Fact: Addicts, as a former detective should know (although I can’t blame Rothmiller; he quit the force 40 years ago), go through a process called “dumping” when they overdose. Marilyn’s pill addiction would have caused her body to “dump” the Nembutal. Noguchi may have found more evidence of the drugs further down her intestine, but he only examined the first foot (as was protocol at the time).
As far as “no evidence,” Marilyn’s liver and blood levels only support an oral ingestion. There was fully formed feces in her bowels which rules out an enema, and a shot wouldn’t have gotten the liver levels as high as they were.
Claim: Forensic evidence went missing.
Fact: Her organs were tested and disposed of after the cause of her death was determined—which was a completely normal procedure for the time. Coroner Thomas Noguchi said years later he would have liked to have completed more testing on them, but there was nothing nefarious about their disposal.
Claim: Pat Newcomb said she went shopping and returned to Fifth Helena that night.
Fact: There is no evidence to support Pat saying this.
Claim: The broken window was mended by the time the police arrived and had been broken from the inside.
Fact: Police photographs from 1962 show the broken window and glass from Greenson breaking it with a fire poker. The poker had a hook design feature on the top, which scattered some glass on the outside as he pulled the poker back.
Claim: Eunice admitted during a 1985 BBC interview that Bobby had been there that night.
Fact: This interview was widely publicized but has never seen the light of day.
Claim: An ambulance came to Marilyn’s house that night.
Fact: This comes from James Hall, who later admitted to lying.
Claim: Neighbors reported a helicopter being heard that night.
Fact: This comes from Robert Slatzer, who claimed to interview a neighbor, then changed it to a neighbor’s daughter who couldn’t be found by the media to corroborate his story.
Claim: Rothmiller interviewed Peter Lawford using super cop techniques in a park, and Lawford admitted that Bobby killed Marilyn.
Fact: “Secret meeting in the park” should sound suspicious to anyone with half a brain. Obviously, there’s no evidence to support this claim and Lawford is long dead.
Claim: Peter Lawford said an older woman answered the door and he thought she was the housekeeper.
Fact: Lawford would have met Eunice Murray several times. There’s no feasible way he didn’t know who she was.
Claim: Eunice left some time in the night.
Fact: Eunice answered the phone for Marilyn that night when Joe DIMaggio Jr. called. Marilyn took the phone into her room to talk to him.
Claim: Robert Kennedy slammed her into the wall before engaging in (multiple) struggles with Marilyn.
Fact: Marilyn had no signs of bruising on her back. She also had no marks on her body that would show a struggle with anyone. She did have a large bruise on her hip (seen in the Barris photos), but there’s nothing to suggest it was fresh.
Claim: Bobby searched her room for a diary.
Fact: Marilyn didn’t believe in keeping diaries and even said so. The “diaries” we do have are notebooks with a few pages, at most, filled out. No one is ever able to produce these mythical diaries (as several have been touted over the years).
Claim: Bobby gave her a glass filled with Nembutal.
Fact: Besides the fact an autopsy doesn’t support Marilyn drinking a liquid, you can’t put 42 pills in a glass and have a clear liquid.
Claim: Marilyn died on her couch and then the police moved her body.
Fact: Did the police tape her fingers around the phone to make rigor-mortis set in so she was holding it? Not only does this make no sense, but it also doesn’t align with the timeline or her liver temperature that shows her death happened in the early morning hours of the 5th (Rothmiller, detective extraordinaire, claims she would have died at around midnight, nearly an hour before the earliest death time).
Claim: Officer Jack Clemmons drove over to Marilyn’s home himself to check out the scene.
Fact: Clemmons went with two other officers and was there for about 15 minutes before being relieved by a detective.
Claim: Lynn Franklin pulled over Bobby, Peter and Greenson.
Fact: Lynn Franklin wasn’t on duty that night.
Claim: Jack Clemmons’ statements were modified to fit the “official” story.
Fact: Clemmons’ wasn’t even asked for a statement, let alone had one altered.
Claim: Clemmons was harassed by the LAPD for asking questions about Marilyn’s death.
Fact: Again, Clemmons was there for 15 minutes. He was let go for slandering a U.S. Senator with Frank Capell in 1965.
Claim: There was livor mortis on Marilyn’s back, showing she’d been moved.
Fact: Marilyn had fixed lividity (another name for livor mortis) on her face, neck, chest, upper arms and right abdomen as well as faint lividity on her back and posterior arms and legs. Fixed lividity patterns show she died face down. The faint lividity was caused by moving her body to the coroner’s office and then the autopsy. It is worth noting here that Greenson did say he rolled her to check for signs of life; however, it’s likely he rolled her upper body and returned her to the position he found her in.
Claim: Clemmons saw bruising on her body.
Fact: There was no bruising on her body minus the hip bruise that’s visible in the Barris’ photos.
Claim: There was only fixed lividity on one side of her body.
Fact: Fixed lividity was on the entire front of her body. Some sources will say fixed lividity only forms after eight hours; however, according to Clark et al. (1997), lividity becomes fixed in 4-6 hours. For the sake of argument, if Marilyn passed away at 12:50, this would align with her doctors discovering her at 4:25 and the coroner examining her at roughly 8 am.
Claim: Clemmons saw rigor mortis, meaning she’d been dead for hours.
Fact: Rigor mortis begins to set in between 1-6 hours after someone dies, with the average person’s being 2-4 hours.
Claim: Greenson was flushing pills down the toilet.
Fact: Again, no evidence. Clemmons was only there for 15 minutes.
Claim: Eunice was laundering sheets.
Fact: Please see my article on this here. TL;DR: Eunice wasn’t washing sheets. Marilyn sent all her laundry out.
Claim: Clemmons was told to initial the photographs.
Fact: No evidence of this.
Claim: Marilyn wasn’t holding a telephone when Clemmons entered her room.
Fact: Greenson had taken the telephone from her hand to call Engelberg and the police.
Claim: Marilyn was nude which is uncommon for suicides.
Fact: There’s no telling what goes through a suicidal person’s brain. It’s also possible it was an accidental overdose based on Marilyn’s regular pill consumption.
Claim: Marilyn slept in a bra.
Fact: This comes from Slatzer. Marilyn almost always slept nude. Her estate auction shows only a few bras.
Claim: There was no glass in her room.
Fact: Pictures show a glass in her room (which the authors do admit but claim it was staged). Scott Fortner owns that glass set—with one missing being the LAPD confiscated it back in 1962.
Claim: Engineered poisons killed her.
Fact: This is really stupid. She had enough barbiturates in her system to kill several people.
Claim: Douglas Thompson interviewed Thomas Noguchi.
Fact: Noguchi has turned down interview requests about Marilyn for years, citing his book if anyone has questions.
Claim: Marilyn was 5’ 4”.
Fact: Marilyn was 5’ 5.5”.
Claim: Noguchi thought the bruise on her hip was proof of violence.
Fact: Noguchi has never said this in his book or in interviews. The hip on her bruise is visible in the Barris photos from several weeks before.
Claim: Noguchi thought it was odd there was no yellow dye from the Nembutal.
Fact: While common in many overdoses, Marilyn’s addicted body dumped the Nembutal.
Claim: “The liver, kidney and stomach and its contents vanished overnight.”
Fact: The liver, kidneys and stomach were all tested and proved she overdosed, but good try. Noguchi, as stated earlier, did wish he would have done more testing on the organs. After finding out they were discarded, he said it was disappointing but not suspicious.
Claim: The audio clip of Greenson saying, “Ask Bobby Kennedy!” was a slip up.
Fact: We have only a very small clip of this audio. We have no idea of the context nor of the questioning that happened immediately before Greenson’s outburst.
Claim: Joe DiMaggio “took charge” of Marilyn’s funeral.
Fact: Berniece was unable to get a flight in time to begin preparations and asked DiMaggio to help her. Once she arrived, they jointly planned the funeral (which Marilyn’s estate paid for).
Claim: Arthur Miller didn’t got to Marilyn’s funeral because he thought someone had murdered her.
Fact: Arthur continuously blamed Hollywood and her doctors for her death. He believed it was an accident. This isn’t new information.
Claim: Otash planted listening devices in her home.
Fact: No evidence of this. The “wiring” found in Marilyn’s home in the 70s (when a D-list actress claimed to live there but didn’t) was actually old telephone and electrical wiring getting cleared out from the home as it was rewired. We’re still waiting nearly 40 years later for Otash’s recording to be released.
Claim: Slatzer’s version helped the LAPD’s lies.
Fact: He’s basically saying the same thing the authors are. It’s rich that they’re saying some of his stuff is wrong when they sing far-right nut job Frank Capell’s praises, who wrote most of Slatzer’s book.
Claim: Jeanne Carmen had been a close friend of Marilyn’s before getting scared off by the Kennedys.
Fact: No evidence to even suggest the two women even knew one another.
Claim: Frank Capell was right about most things in his book.
Fact: No evidence to support convicted felon Frank Capell’s work. Worth nothing the authors don’t mention to their readers that Capell was convicted of libel with Jack Clemmons in 1965.
Claim: Marilyn was going to call a press conference about her affairs with the Kennedys.
Fact: This would have been career suicide for Marilyn. There is no proof she was going to call a press conference, including in the Arthur P. Jacobs archive.
Claim: Rothmiller saw her red diary and transcribed parts.
Fact: Don’t worry though! He couldn’t make copies or take pictures, meaning he has absolutely zero evidence for any of his claims.
Claim: The carpet under Marilyn’s door was too thick to see the light.
Fact: Pictures from 1962 show light was visible.
Classic Blondes 
4 thoughts on “Review of Bombshell: The Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Monroe Part 4”