June 26, 2026

Marilyn Monroe: The Kennedys, the FBI Files, and the Doctors Who Had Her on a Lethal Cocktail (Part 2 of 2)

Show Notes
Transcript

Part two of the centennial investigation goes into the deep water. If Marilyn Monroe's 1962 death wasn't the simple suicide the coroner signed off on, then what was it? Garret Fisher walks through the theories the new Fox/TMZ special leans into — the rumored affairs with President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the heavily redacted FBI surveillance files investigator Paul Holes wants unsealed, J. Edgar Hoover, the organized-crime theories, and the claim that Monroe may not have even died at home — and labels each one honestly as unproven rumor. But the thread that actually holds up requires no conspiracy at all: the two physicians, psychiatrist Ralph Greenson and internist Hyman Engelberg, who had a vulnerable, isolated woman on a dangerous combination of barbiturates and chloral hydrate, and a 1962 system that never held anyone to account. The 1982 LA District Attorney review found no credible evidence of foul play — and also never cleared the original investigation. Sixty-four years of suspicion, and the one question this saga can finally answer.

This episode references suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 in the U.S.

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WEBVTT

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Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. I'm Garrett Fisher, and this

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is Daily Crime and Justice. It's Friday, June twenty sixth,

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twenty twenty six and this is part two. Yesterday we

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stood in the bedroom. We walked through the night of

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August fourth, nineteen sixty two, the housekeeper, the broken window,

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the hours that vanished before the police were ever called.

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And a brand new Fox special in which the man

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who caught the Golden State killer looks at the scene

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and says it was staged. We ended on the one

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thing I can prove that the investigation into Marilyn Monroe's

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death was a disaster, and that disaster is the vacuum

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every theory you've ever heard came rushing into phil. So

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today we opened the door to those theories. And I'm

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going to ask you to hold two things in your

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head at the same time, because this is where people

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lose their minds. One, these stories are mostly unproven. Some

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of them are decades old rumor stacked on rumor. And

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I am not going to stand here and tell you

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the Kennedys killed Marilyn Monroe, because I cannot prove that,

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and neither can anyone else. Two. The reason these stories

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have legs at all is that the official version was

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handled so badly that it left room for every one

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of them. Both things are true, Let's go carefully. You

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cannot talk about Marilyn Monroe's death for more than ninety

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seconds before someone says the word Kennedy, so let's deal

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with it head on. For decades, there have been allegations

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that Marilyn was romantically involved with President John F. Kennedy

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and possibly also with his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

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The famous Happy Birthday Mister President performance in May of

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nineteen sixty two, breathy and intimate in front of a stadium,

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poured gasoline on that fire, and it has never gone out.

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The theory the New Special leans into runs like this,

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If Marilyn was close to the most powerful men in America,

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she may have been told things sensitive things, government things,

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national security things, and a movie star in an unstable

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stretch of her life, holding secrets like that becomes a liability.

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Paul Holes raises the existence of heavily redacted FBI documents

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files showing the Bureau was monitoring Marilyn Monroe, and he

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said he'd love to see them fully released, because in

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his view, they might hold answers. There's long running speculation

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too that FBI director j Edgar Hoover viewed her as

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a potential security risk. Now I want to be a

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responsible adult with you here, because this is exactly where

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true crime goes to die. Everything I just said is allegation, rumor,

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and theory. The affairs themselves have never been definitively established.

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The leap from she may have known something to therefore

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powerful people had her killed is an enormous leap, and

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it is built almost entirely on the absence of evidence,

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rather than the presence of it. That's the tell, by

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the way, when a theory's strongest argument is well, the

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files are redacted, so who knows what's in them. That's

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not evidence. That's a shrug dressed up as a smoking gun.

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Do I think the FBI files should be released? Honestly? Yes,

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sunlight is good and if the Bureau was watching her,

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the public is entitled to know why and how. Holes

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is right to ask, but asking for transparency is a

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very different act than declaring a murder. I'll take the

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unsealed documents. I won't take the conclusion that's been pre

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written for them. The mob, the moved body, and the

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theory buffet. The Kennedy thread is the headliner, but it

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is far from the only act. Over sixty four years,

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this case has grown a whole ecosystem of theories, and

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the new special adds its own. Let me run them

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quickly and let me label each one honestly as I go.

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There's the organized crime theory that mob figures with their

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own grievances against the Kennedys, used Marylyn as a pawn,

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or silenced her, or staged her death to send a message.

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It's a fixture of the literature. It is also to

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this day unproven. There's a claim in the Fox and

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TMZ special itself that I want to flag clearly because

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it's a big one. The suggestion, based on their reading

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of the evidence, that Marilyn may not have even died

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at home, that the scene in that bedroom was arranged

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after the fact. That is a dramatic allegation. It is

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presented by the special as an alternative scenario. Their investigators

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raise not as an established fact, and you should file

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it exactly that way. A troubling possibility floated by a

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television documentary not a finding, and then there's everything else,

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the variations, the name conspirators, the deathbed confessions that surface

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every few years, the books. Here's the thing about a

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theory buffet this large. Its very size is usually a

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sign of weakness, not strength. When there are forty competing

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explanations and none of them can be nailed down. That's

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not because the truth is so dangerous it's been hidden

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forty different ways. It's usually because the original evidence was

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so thin that anyone can project anything onto it. Brentwood

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nineteen sixty two gave the world a blank screen. Everyone's

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been showing their own movie on it ever since. All Right,

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I've spent two segments telling you what I can't prove.

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Let me spend this one on what I think actually matters.

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Because there is a thread in this story that requires

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no conspiracy at all, and it's the one that makes

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me angry, and it's the one almost nobody puts on

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the poster. The doctors. By the summer of nineteen sixty two,

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Marilyn Monroe had two physicians deeply embedded in her daily life.

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Jiman Engelberg, her internist who prescribed her medications, including that nembtah,

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and Ralph Greenson, her psychiatrist, who had become something far

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more than a psychiatrist. Greenson had Marilyn living near him.

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He had, by many accounts, placed the housekeeper, Eunice Murray

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in her home. He saw her constantly. The professional boundary

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between doctor and patient, and the telling of more than

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one biographer, had dissolved into something tangled and unhealthy and dependent.

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Now stack the prescriptions. You've got a psychiatrist and an

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internist both treating the same fragile, medicated woman. You've got

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barbiturates nembutahal and sedatives like chloral hydrate in the same house,

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in the same body. And here's the pharmacology that should

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stop you cold. Barbiturates and chloral hydrate together are a

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dangerous combination. They amplify each other. Margin between a sleeping

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dose and a lethal dose narrows. You do not need

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a Kennedy, You do not need the mob. You do

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not need a single villain in a trench coat to

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get a dead movie star out of that situation. You

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just need two doctors who weren't talking to each other

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or weren't being careful enough prescribing powerful drugs to a

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woman in crisis. That's the question that has always deserved

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more oxygen than the conspiracies. Did Marilyn Monroe's medical care

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meet any reasonable standard? Was anyone watching the total load

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of what she was being given. Paul Hols himself, in

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the middle of all the spy thriller stuff, said, the

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medical treatment raises questions worth scrutinizing, including whether her care

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met the standard it should have. And on that narrow point,

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I think he's dead right, because whatever happened in that bedroom,

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the road to it ran straight through a prescription pad.

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And here's what eats at me. Nobody was ever held

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accountable for that, not investigated for it, not sanctioned for it,

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not in any meaning way called to answer for how

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a thirty six year old woman in their care ended

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up dead of the very medications they were managing. Accountability

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doesn't have a legal department, and it sure didn't have

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one in nineteen sixty two, when the patient was famous

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and the doctors were respected, and everyone just wanted the

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story to be over. What the official reviews found. I

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told you I'd give you the factual anchor, So here

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it is. This case did not just sit untouched in

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nineteen eighty two, twenty years after she died, and after

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a fresh wave of conspiracy books reignited public interest, the

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Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office under John Van de

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Camp conducted a review of Marilyn Monroe's death. They looked

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at the case specifically to determine whether there was any

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basis to suspect murder. Their conclusion no credible evidence of

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foul play, no basis to reopen it as a homicide.

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At the same time, and this is the part that

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gets left out of the breathless retellings, that review did

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not exactly hand the original investigation a gold star, the mishandling,

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the thin documentation, the lost hours, those criticisms are baked

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into the record. So the official position to this day

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is essentially this, the death was a probable suicide. The

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investigation that produced that ruling was badly flawed, and neither

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of those statements cancels the other out. That's a deeply

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unsatisfying place to land. I know, we want the bow

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on top, we want either a clean suicide or a

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named killer. What we have instead is a woman who

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died of an overdose under circumstances. So poorly documented that

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sixty four years later, a famous detective can look at

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one photograph and credibly say it bothers him, and also

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so poorly documented that no one can ever prove the

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darker story either. Uncertainty is the legacy of that night,

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and uncertainty is exactly what a competent investigation is supposed

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to prevent one hundred years. So let me bring it

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home on her one hundredth birthday the way I think

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she's actually owed. I cannot tell you Marilyn Monroe was murdered.

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I've looked at what the new special put forward, I've

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looked at the red flags Paul Holes raised, and as

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a matter of intriguing, unsettling questions, they're real. That window

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glass on the wrong side genuinely nags at me. But

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intriguing questions are not proof. The only official ruling remains

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probable suicide, and every formal review has come back without

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evidence of homicide. I'm not going to launder a documentary's

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theory into a verdict just because it's the centennial and

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the story cells. But I can tell you this, and

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I can tell you it with my whole chest. Marilyn

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Monroe was failed She was failed by an investigation that

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let her death scene rot for hours. She was failed

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by a medical relationship that had her on a cocktail

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that could kill and apparently nobody minding the total. She

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was failed, arguably long before that night, by an industry

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that sold her as a fantasy and a public that

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consumed the fantasy and never much cared about the exhausted, intelligent,

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struggling woman underneath it. The conspiracies, in a strange way,

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are a kind of compliment the world pays itself. Because

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she was murdered by powerful men is a more flattering

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story than the truth, which is that a vulnerable person

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was surrounded by people and systems that all in their

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own way, looked away. Nobody was paying attention to her.

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That's the line that's haunted me through both of these episodes,

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not in the bedroom that night, not in the months before,

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not in the hours after. And the great irony of

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the last sixty four years is that we've paid obsessive

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attention to her death and almost none to what it

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actually tells us. That a famous woman can die in

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the most scrutinized house in America and still not get

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a competent investigation. She would have been a hundred this year.

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She deserved one hundred years. She deserved doctors who coordinated,

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a system that documented, and a world that saw the

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person and not just the poster. She got none of

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those things in time. The least we can do a

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century on is tell the truth about it. And the

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truth is that the mystery of Marilyn Monroe isn't really

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a who done it. It's a story about how easy

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it is to stop paying attention to someone, even when

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she's the most watched woman alive. If these two episodes

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meant something to you, share them, tell a friend, pass

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it along, because that's how a show like this stays alive.

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And if you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment and

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tell me where you came down across both parts. Batched investigation,

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medical failure, or something darker that the redacted files are

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still hiding. I want to hear it. I'm Garrett Fischer.

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This was Daily Crime and Justice. Happy hundredth Maryland, and

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to everyone still in the position to look out for

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the vulnerable person in front of them, do better. Tonight's

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episode discussed theories about the death of Marilyn Monroe. Her

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death was officially ruled a probable suicide from acute barbiturate

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poisoning in nineteen sixty two, and that remains the only

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official conclusion. In nineteen eighty two, the Los Angeles County

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District Attorney's Office reviewed the case and found no credible

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evidence of foul play. No person has ever been charged

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in connection with her death. The alleged relationships between Marilyn

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Monroe and President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy,

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the FBI monitoring and national security claims, the organized crime theories,

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and the suggestion that she may not have died at

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home are unproven. Allegations and theories some raised by the

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Fox and TMZ special Celebrity Crime Scene Marilyn Monroe, circulating

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for decades. They are presented here as theories under discussion,

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not as established fact. Descriptions of her medical care reflect

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longstanding biographical and journalistic debate, not legal findings against any individual.

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This episode references suicide. If you are someone you know

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as struggling, you can call or text nine to eight

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eight in the United States to reach the Suicide and

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Crisis Lifeline. Sourcing includes Fox News Digital, The Mirror, AOL, Yahoo,

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and tmz