Review of Bombshell: The Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Monroe Part 5

We’ve done it! I read the worst book I’ve seen in ages in a day! This last post is actually my personal thoughts on the book, so if that’s not your thing, I totally understand.

For the debunking, use these links:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Mike Rothmiller was a detective for the LAPD while Douglas Thompson is a “Hollywood writer” (his words, not mine) originally from Scotland. I believe it’s supposed to be Thompson who completed the research on the book, but I can’t say for certain. Regardless of who completed it, the book is horrific, getting even the most basic facts wrong about Marilyn Monroe’s life (the above articles total about 3,500 words when put together).

Look, Marilyn Monroe’s death fascinates people simply because it has all the makings of a shit show, and I genuinely do not care what people think. Hell, go with a laser beam from Mars if you want to. I really do not care one bit. People are going to hold on to their thoughts, and the science can go away because it’s “tainted.” As I have said a million times before, you can believe whatever the hell you want, but you don’t get to cherry pick the autopsy report and hold onto one part and say the rest is crap. At the end of the day, the autopsy report only supports an oral ingestion.

What set me off with this book was someone saying, “Lol there’s some really good stuff in there that I am not going to discuss.” Well, okay, then why bring it up? However, some people are like that, so I figured I would go ahead and look at this apparent wonder in Monroe studies because it was going to have THE information I needed because the sources were impeccable. Spoiler: They’re not.

Instead what readers get is a poorly researched biography/death examination that is so mind-blowingly stupid it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. I don’t know if the publisher is going out of business and needed some sort of push in sales or if they’re just skeevy, but absolutely no fact checking was completed on this book. The information, minus the most likely fictitious Lawford interviews and “diary entries,” is all old hat. It relies on the same chagrins debunked nearly 40 years ago.

The “crucial new evidence” is the supposed diary entries. Rothmiller has no copies or photos of these (because these people never do). Instead he has his handwritten notes (because cops just go through old case files when not working) that have absolutely no provenance. Rothmiller first came out with his asinine claims in the 1990s, so I would assume that’s when he “remembered” them. That being said, don’t believe for a second that I think Rothmiller is dumb. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He and Douglas are attempting to whip the community into a frenzy to demand the LAPD release Marilyn’s diary. When nothing comes up (most likely being it doesn’t exist), he can sit there and say, “I TOLD YOU SO! THEY’RE HIDING THINGS FROM YOU!” It’s a classic deflection technique, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of brains to figure it out. No one can question him because the big, bad LAPD is going to lie.

At the end of the day, the book is garbage, the authors did no research and people are supposed to believe outlandish claims because Rothmiller is a former detective. I honestly don’t know how anyone who considers themselves a Marilyn fan could read this book, let alone like and recommend it, but fandom comes in all forms I suppose. As for me, I’m going to write a book about how Marilyn was shot with a laser beam from the Moon. It’s as logical as this mess.