It's been 50 years since Marilyn Monroe died, but the mystery surrounding her death has not faded with time. Was she murdered? INSIDE EDITION talks to the author of a new book about the death of the screen legend.
It's been 50 years since Marilyn Monroe's tragic death, but the passing decades have done little to extinguish her legend, or the nagging questions surrounding her mysterious demise.
Monroe was found dead in her home in Brentwood, Califorina, on August 5,1962. Her body was discovered by her housekeeper face down and naked on her bed. The coroner ruled that her death was a probable suicide by drug overdose. But to this day, many people believe Marilyn Monroe was murdered.
Jim Baker researched Marilyn Monroe's death for his new mystery novel, The Empty Glass, inspired by the conspiracy theories surrounding her death.
Baker told INSIDE EDITION, "It's one of the great mysteries of the 20th century. It's right up there with the Kennedy assassination. I think there was definately a cover up. Was it a cover up of homicide? I think it could be."
In the months before she died, Monroe was struggling personally and professionally.
An outtake exists from her last movie, Something's Got To Give, which she was shooting it in the weeks before she died, and it has never been released. It was her sexiest role ever. But she caused havoc on set—repeatedly failing to show up for work, and when she was there, complaining of exhaustion and forgetting her lines.
Monroe was battling alcohol and pill addiction. Her life was in turmoil. At age 36, she had already been divorced three times.
But some conspiracy theorists believe it was her relationship with the Kennedys that may have led to her death.
Monroe is rumored to have had an affair with both President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Some believe she recorded details of her intimate encounters with them in a secret diary.
"Many people suggest that that diary was filled with things that Bobby and JFK told her that they did not want made public," said Baker.
The diary has never been found—or its existence verified.
Cops found 15 pill bottles by her bedside, but Baker says Monroe couldn't have killed herself by swallowing pills.
"In order for her blood to have the level of drugs in it that it had when she died, she would have had to consume more than 50 pills by mouth, very quickly, and yet there was no water glass or any water at all in her locked bedroom," said Baker.
He believes someone injected her with a massive drug overdose, and that the police would have reached the same conclusion if they had the C.S.I. technology we have today.
Had she lived, Monroe would be 86 years old this week. It's hard to imagine her ever growing old. Our enduring image of her will always be a stunning blonde bombshell, frozen in time.
