Marilyn Monroe is found dead.

 On August 5, 1962, movie actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home in Los Angeles. She was discovered lying nude on her bed, face down, with a telephone in one hand. Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room. After a brief investigation, Los Angeles police concluded that her death was “caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide.”

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926. Her mother was emotionally unstable and frequently confined to an asylum, so Norma Jeane was reared by a succession of foster parents and in an orphanage. At the age of 16, she married a fellow worker in an aircraft factory, but they divorced a few years later. She took up modeling in 1944 and in 1946 signed a short-term contract with 20th Century Fox, taking as her screen name Marilyn Monroe. She had a few bit parts and then returned to modeling, famously posing nude for a calendar in 1949.

She began to attract attention as an actress in 1950 after appearing in minor roles in the The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve. Although she was onscreen only briefly playing a mistress in both films, audiences took note of the blonde bombshell, and she won a new contract from Fox. Her acting career took off in the early 1950s with performances in Love Nest (1951), Monkey Business (1952), and Niagara (1953).

Celebrated for her voluptuousness and wide-eyed charm, she won international fame for her sex-symbol roles in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and There’s No Business Like Show Business(1954). The Seven-Year Itch (1955) showcased her comedic talents and features the classic scene where she stands over a subway grating and has her white skirt billowed up by the wind from a passing train. In 1954, she married baseball great Joe DiMaggio, attracting further publicity, but they divorced eight months later.

In 1955, she studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City and subsequently gave a strong performance as a hapless entertainer in Bus Stop (1956). In 1956, she married playwright Arthur Miller. She made The Prince and the Showgirl—a critical and commercial failure—with Laurence Olivier in 1957 but in 1959 gave an acclaimed performance in the hit comedy Some Like It Hot. Her last role, in The Misfits (1961), was directed by John Huston and written by Miller, whom she divorced just one week before the film’s opening.

By 1961, Monroe, beset by depression, was under the constant care of a psychiatrist. Increasingly erratic in the last months of her life, she lived as a virtual recluse in her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home. After midnight on August 5, 1962, her maid, Eunice Murray, noticed Monroe’s bedroom light on. When Murray found the door locked and Marilyn unresponsive to her calls, she called Monroe’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who gained access to the room by breaking a window. Entering, he found Marilyn dead, and the police were called sometime after. An autopsy found a fatal amount of sedatives in her system, and her death was ruled probable suicide.

In recent decades, there have been a number of conspiracy theories about her death, most of which contend that she was murdered by John and/or Robert Kennedy, with whom she allegedly had love affairs. These theories claim that the Kennedys killed her (or had her killed) because they feared she would make public their love affairs and other government secrets she was gathering. On August 4, 1962, Robert Kennedy, then attorney general in his older brother’s cabinet, was in fact in Los Angeles. Two decades after the fact, Monroe’s housekeeper, Eunice Murray, announced for the first time that the attorney general had visited Marilyn on the night of her death and quarreled with her, but the reliability of these and other statements made by Murray are questionable. Decades after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains a major cultural icon.

At the time of Marilyn Monroe’s death on the night of August 4th or early morning of August 5th, ten capsules of Nembutal remained. This suggests that approximately ninety capsules had been used over the course of just ten days—a staggering amount. The question must be asked: what happened to those pills? Even if Marilyn had been sleeping around the clock, it would have been impossible for her to consume that many on her own.

Further complicating matters, the Coroner claimed she had ingested a lethal dose of Nembutal, yet the toxicologist did not find any residue in her stomach and reportedly didn’t conduct a full analysis. Why make such a declaration without scientific evidence? This inconsistency alone demands a serious reexamination by the authorities.

There’s also the matter of the scene itself.

It’s been stated that the bedroom window was broken from the inside, yet the shattered glass was found outside, which defies logic and basic forensic principles. Monroe’s nude body was found in bed, with the covers pulled neatly up to her neck. But if she had died while lying face-down—as some reports and theories claim—how could the covers have been pulled up afterward?

Witnesses also noted that an officer used what appeared to be a phone cord to close the broken window. That cord was not near Monroe’s body. Why was it disturbed? Who moved it?

These are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered.

As for the speculation surrounding the Mafia’s alleged involvement in Monroe’s death—my grandfather was in the mob. I asked him directly, and he told me plainly: the Mob had nothing against Marilyn. So why would they want her dead?

There are three individuals who were with or around Marilyn on her final day: her housekeeper, Eunice Murray; her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson; and her publicist, Patricia Newcomb. Each of them holds pieces of the puzzle.

Patricia Newcomb, in particular, has always stood out. When I once asked her if Robert Kennedy was involved in Marilyn’s death, her response was strange—not a “yes,” not a “no,” just: “I hope not.”

That reply stuck with me. It made me question: Did she suspect Marilyn had been murdered, but couldn’t bear to believe it? Or did she know more than she let on and didn’t want to implicate anyone? 

During one of our conversations, we discussed the vast trove of content on the internet—letters, photos, conspiracy theories. She casually said, “I don’t know why Marilyn is still such a big deal—she wasn’t my only client.” Her reply was sharp—almost tinged with jealousy: “Of course I was upset. My best friend was dead.”

That moment reminded me that for Patricia, this wasn’t just business. But it also left me with a lingering sense that many of those closest to Marilyn have carried truths they’ve never fully shared.