Such is the conclusion of a former Los Angeles County prosecutor who has long suspected the film goddess was murdered, and has gone public with transcripts of audio recordings he says she made that back up his argument.
Excerpts of John W. Miner's transcripts were published in the Los Angeles Times on Friday, the 43rd anniversary of Monroe's death. The complete transcripts, minus "the most graphic words and passages," but with their praise of Clark Gable, orgasms and enemas, and their detailing of a one-night stand with Joan Crawford intact, can be found online at LaTimes.com.
The nude body of Monroe was found in her Los Angeles home on Aug. 5, 1962. The autopsy, which Miner attended, showed the clinical cause of death was barbiturate overdose; the somewhat inconclusive conclusion was that the 36-year-old actress probably took her own life.
"Marilyn Monroe bears the stigma of suicide," the 86-year-old Miner writes in a blow-by-blow accounting of the case, also posted on the Times' Website. "That is wrong and must be corrected."
Miner argues that it was unlikely that Monroe received her lethal dose of drugs orally (no traces in the stomach, he said) or via injection (no needle marks, he said). To him, that leaves an enema as the likely conduit. According to Miner's theory, Monroe was slipped a "Mickey Finn" in order to knock her out, and then administered an enema bag loaded with Nembutal by "person(s) unknown."
The rumor mill long has been churning out murder suspects with regards to the Monroe death--from CIA operatives to the Kennedys, the latter fueled by Monroe's reputed affairs with both President John F. Kennedy and his brother, then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. In his writing, Miner himself doesn't name names. His Monroe transcripts don't offer any hints of enemies, either.
To Miner, the transcripts are evidence not of Monroe's killers, but of her state of mind--her optimistic state of mind. "She had too many plans to fulfill, too much to live for, and had, at last, found the physical satisfaction that she so missed for all of her life," the Times-posted treatise says.
Among the highlights of Miner's supposed Monroe transcripts:
The actress, addressing her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, riffs her way from James Joyce's Ulysses to Jews in Hollywood. "What is a Jew?" Monroe asks. "I have met and [unknown--the Times edited out the presumably offending word or words] more Jews than I can count, and boy have I been screwed by some of them." Monroe credits Greenson with instructing her on how to "stimulate myself," and achieve orgasm. Prior to Greenson's advice, Monroe says she was an expert at faking orgasms, and should have won an Academy Award for her performances. Crawford, who won an Academy Award for Mildred Pierce, "had a gigantic orgasm and shrieked like a maniac" during her one night of passion with Monroe. Later, Crawford turned nasty when Monroe rejected the older woman's advances for "another round." Most of Monroe's big-screen brethren lived for, and loved, enemas, although Mae West is the only enema enthusiast Monroe names--excluding herself. "Yes, I enjoy enemas," she says. "So, what!" Monroe says she loved working with Gable on The Misfits, dreamed he asked her to star with him in a sequel to Gone with the Wind, and cried for two days when he died in 1960. Monroe loved Frank Sinatra, but didn't want to marry him. She loved former husband Joe DiMaggio, but he didn't want to be married to her screen persona. She made a mistake marrying playwright Arthur Miller. Monroe vowed to be the highest-paid actress in Hollywood--"double what they pay [Elizabeth] Taylor"--and then use her clout to launch the "Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Film Festival." The "Commander-in-Chief," presumably President Kennedy, is a great man; "Bobby," presumably Robert Kennedy, is a puzzle--"Doctor, what should I do about Bobby?"
According to Miner, Monroe made the audio recordings at Greenson's home--possibly in 1962, the Times suggests. An author who used Miner's transcripts as the basis for a 2004 book on Monroe told the Times he believes Monroe handed over the tapes to Greenson on Aug. 4, 1962, the day before her death.
The author, Matthew Smith, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour M. Hersh, said to have referenced the transcripts in his 1998 book on the Kennedys, are among those who told the newspaper they believe Miner to be a credible source. Such endorsements are key as Miner claims Greenson, who died in 1979, destroyed the Monroe tapes, and that he is the only living human who has heard them. He told the Times his transcripts are based on "extensive" and "nearly verbatim" notes of the recordings.
For what it's worth, a psychiatry professor who bills himself as a "pioneer in past-life regression therapy," and has a client he is convinced is the reincarnation of Monroe, says he thinks the transcripts sound like the late actress.
Dr. Adrian Finkelstein told E! Online on Monday that while he has yet to ask his subject, identified as recording artist Sherrie Lea, about the transcripts, from what he has gleaned from the Times report, they "most probably" are Monroe's words.
Finkelstein even agrees with Miner's basic conclusion, to a point. Based on his interviews with the purportedly reincarnated Monroe, conducted while his subject was under hypnosis, he explained, the original Monroe did not kill herself--at least not intentionally.
"She didn't want to die," Finkelstein said, "but she realized she took too much. It was an accidental overdose."
Monroe was reborn 11 months later, Finkelstein said. He is vowing to introduce her reincarnation to the public on Aug. 13 in New York.
Mystery may yet surround Monroe's death, but according to Finkelstein, her reincarnated version, at least, has found peace.
Said the doctor of his client: "She is relieved."