John Miner, a former prosecutor in Los Angeles who died on February 25 aged 92, investigated the mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962 and concluded that the star had been murdered in what he considered the most bizarre case in American history.
Image 2 of 3
John Miner Photo: Los Angeles Times
The question of how Marilyn Monroe died has been examined and debated by authors, journalists, programme makers and conspiracy theorists for nearly half a century, ever since her naked body was found face down on a bed at her home in Los Angeles in the early hours of August 5 1962.
A post mortem conducted by Dr Thomas Noguchi, then deputy medical examiner, suggested that she had died, aged 36, of acute barbiturate poisoning. Her death was ruled a "probable suicide".
As head of the district attorney's medical-legal section, Miner was also present at the post mortem, and recalled that at the morgue he and Noguchi were deeply affected when the sheet was pulled back to reveal the face of the most famous blonde in the world. "We had a sense of real sadness," he recalled, "and the feeling that this young, young woman could stand up and get off the table any minute."
According to Keya Morgan, an author who repeatedly interviewed Miner, there were two factors that raised doubts in Miner's mind about the suicide verdict. The first was that toxicity levels in Monroe's body were extraordinarily high, suggesting that she would have "had to take 60 to 70 pills". Despite this, the autopsy noted that "the stomach is almost completely empty. No residue of the pills is noted."
The second suspicious factor was that specimens which could have settled the matter one way or another "disappeared overnight, including the liver, kidney and stomach and its contents, which would have proven definitely she did not kill herself".
Miner concluded that Monroe had been given an enema of the barbiturate Nembutal, and never changed his opinion that she had not taken her own life, but had it forcibly taken from her.
A memorandum to this effect that he wrote to the coroner, Theodore Curphey, and copied to the chief deputy district attorney, Manley Bowler, also disappeared. "Bowler, my boss was a bureaucrat," Miner noted later. "He saw the coroner's report – why rock the boat? That's the way things operate."
But there was other evidence to strengthen Miner's belief that the actress had not been suicidal at the time of her death. This was the 40-minute recording, probably made just weeks before she died, that Monroe had given to her psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson.
After Monroe's death Miner had been instructed to obtain an interview with Greenson, who played him this recording on the condition that Miner never reveal its contents. According to Miner he took "extensive" and "nearly verbatim" notes of the tapes.
Following Greenson's death, however, the psychiatrist's name began to be bandied about as a possible "suspect" in the case of Marilyn Monroe's death. Miner wanted to use the secret tape to clear Greenson's name, and contacted his widow, asking to be released from the vow of silence he had made to her late husband.
In 2005 he duly handed a copy of his notes of the secret Monroe recording to the Los Angeles Times newspaper. They created a storm, with Monroe describing a one-night stand with the actress Joan Crawford, which she did not greatly enjoy, and going on to reveal how she had craved a father's love from Clark Gable and badly wanted to be taken seriously as an actress by playing Shakespeare. She also spoke candidly about her failed marriages to the baseball star Joe DiMaggio and the playwright Arthur Miller.
She also described standing naked in front of a full-length mirror and noting that, with the approach of middle age, "my breasts are beginning to sag a bit". On the other hand, "my waist isn't bad" and her bottom was still "the best".
She also praised President John F Kennedy, but did not say whether they had an affair. Of the president's brother, Bobby, then the nation's Attorney General, she said: "As you see, there is no room in my life for him. I guess I don't have the courage to face up to it and hurt him. I want someone else to tell him it's over. I tried to get the president to do it, but I couldn't reach him."
The star also asked Greenson to help her get Eunice Murray, her housekeeper, another job. "I can't flat out fire her," she said. "Next thing would be a book – Secrets of Marilyn Monroe by Her Housekeeper. She'd make a fortune spilling what she knows and she knows too damn much."
Miner was greatly moved by what he heard on the tape. He subsequently maintained that anyone reading the transcript would conclude that "there was no possible way this woman could have killed herself. She had very specific plans for her future."
Twenty years after Marilyn Monroe's death, in 1982, an official review of the case by the district attorney's office noted that "factual discrepancies" and "unanswered questions" remained, but that there was "no credible evidence supporting a murder theory".
John Willis Miner was born December 20 1918 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He graduated in Law from UCLA and went into private practice before joining the district attorney's office in 1959. In 1963 he also began teaching at the University of Southern California's Institute of Psychiatry, Law and Behavioural Science, which he co-founded.
He also lectured as an associate clinical professor the USC's medical school.
In the late 1960s Miner was present at the post mortems carried out on Bobby Kennedy, and on the victims of the murders by the Charles Manson "family". He also attended the trials that followed the Kennedy and Manson cases and was responsible for ensuring that body specimens and artefacts were preserved properly for trial. When he resigned from the DA's office in 1970, he returned to private practice.
John Miner is survived by a daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/celebrity-obituaries/8362737/John-Miner.html
A memorandum to this effect that he wrote to the coroner, Theodore Curphey, and copied to the chief deputy district attorney, Manley Bowler, also disappeared. "Bowler, my boss was a bureaucrat," Miner noted later. "He saw the coroner's report – why rock the boat? That's the way things operate."
But there was other evidence to strengthen Miner's belief that the actress had not been suicidal at the time of her death. This was the 40-minute recording, probably made just weeks before she died, that Monroe had given to her psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson.
After Monroe's death Miner had been instructed to obtain an interview with Greenson, who played him this recording on the condition that Miner never reveal its contents. According to Miner he took "extensive" and "nearly verbatim" notes of the tapes.
Following Greenson's death, however, the psychiatrist's name began to be bandied about as a possible "suspect" in the case of Marilyn Monroe's death. Miner wanted to use the secret tape to clear Greenson's name, and contacted his widow, asking to be released from the vow of silence he had made to her late husband.
In 2005 he duly handed a copy of his notes of the secret Monroe recording to the Los Angeles Times newspaper. They created a storm, with Monroe describing a one-night stand with the actress Joan Crawford, which she did not greatly enjoy, and going on to reveal how she had craved a father's love from Clark Gable and badly wanted to be taken seriously as an actress by playing Shakespeare. She also spoke candidly about her failed marriages to the baseball star Joe DiMaggio and the playwright Arthur Miller.
She also described standing naked in front of a full-length mirror and noting that, with the approach of middle age, "my breasts are beginning to sag a bit". On the other hand, "my waist isn't bad" and her bottom was still "the best".
She also praised President John F Kennedy, but did not say whether they had an affair. Of the president's brother, Bobby, then the nation's Attorney General, she said: "As you see, there is no room in my life for him. I guess I don't have the courage to face up to it and hurt him. I want someone else to tell him it's over. I tried to get the president to do it, but I couldn't reach him."
The star also asked Greenson to help her get Eunice Murray, her housekeeper, another job. "I can't flat out fire her," she said. "Next thing would be a book – Secrets of Marilyn Monroe by Her Housekeeper. She'd make a fortune spilling what she knows and she knows too damn much."
Miner was greatly moved by what he heard on the tape. He subsequently maintained that anyone reading the transcript would conclude that "there was no possible way this woman could have killed herself. She had very specific plans for her future."
Twenty years after Marilyn Monroe's death, in 1982, an official review of the case by the district attorney's office noted that "factual discrepancies" and "unanswered questions" remained, but that there was "no credible evidence supporting a murder theory".
John Willis Miner was born December 20 1918 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He graduated in Law from UCLA and went into private practice before joining the district attorney's office in 1959. In 1963 he also began teaching at the University of Southern California's Institute of Psychiatry, Law and Behavioural Science, which he co-founded.
He also lectured as an associate clinical professor the USC's medical school.
In the late 1960s Miner was present at the post mortems carried out on Bobby Kennedy, and on the victims of the murders by the Charles Manson "family". He also attended the trials that followed the Kennedy and Manson cases and was responsible for ensuring that body specimens and artefacts were preserved properly for trial. When he resigned from the DA's office in 1970, he returned to private practice.
John Miner is survived by a daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/celebrity-obituaries/8362737/John-Miner.html
No comments:
Post a Comment