The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe by Donald H. Wolfe

the Mafia. He also recalled the names of Jimmy Hoffa, Fidel Castro, and Frank Sinatra. When he left the office that day, he locked the diary in the safe at the coroner’s office, but when he opened it the next day, the red diary was gone. According to Grandison only three others knew the combination to the safe: Phil Schwartzberg, the coroner’s administrative assistant; Richard Rathman, who was in charge of administration; and Coroner Curphey.
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    In the meantime, a peckish press was grabbing any tidbit of information regarding Marilyn’s last days. Dozens of people claimed they were the last person to speak to her by telephone. The police department received letters containing all sorts of wild allegations. One person “knew for a fact” that Joe DiMaggio had killed his ex-wife in a jealous rage. A stuffed animal she received on the day she died was supposedly connected to a “secret message” that drove her into suicidal despondency.
    At a press conference held on Monday, August 6, Curphey revealed that “Marilyn Monroe definitely had not died from natural causes,” adding that she may have accidentally taken an overdose of sleeping pills. He announced that her death would be probed not only by the coroner’s office but by the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team, the independent investigating unit of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, which had its offices on the campus of UCLA. This investigating team consisted of Dr. Robert Litman, a psychiatrist and professor at UCLA; Dr. Norman Farberow, a prominent psychologist; and Dr. Norman Tabachnick. The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner ’s evening edition of August 6 referred to them as the “Suicide Squad.” Normally, coroner’s investigations are conducted by official investigators and the information gathered becomes a matter of public record, but by appointing a private group working free of charge, Curphey made the inquiry an unofficial investigation. No one interviewed would be put under oath, and no interview would ever become a matter of public record. To this day nobody has ever read the full report of the Suicide Squad other than Curphey, who took the findings to his grave. There is no record that the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team ever participated in a coroner’s office verdict before or after Case #81128.
    Litman, Farberow, and Tabachnick were all associates of Greenson, either as faculty of UCLA, as members and lecturers at the Psychoanalytic Institute, or as fellow committee members at the American Civil Liberties Union. Shortly after the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team was recruited, it received a sizable grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, under a government welfare program initiated by Robert Kennedy and administered by his intimate friend of many years, David Hackett.
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    On Monday, August 6, the Suicide Prevention Team, headed by Farberow, held a press conference and announced that they would hold “exhaustiveinterviews regarding the probable suicide of Marilyn Monroe.” On Tuesday, they held another press conference, during which Farberow and Litman announced, “We’re interviewing anybody and everybody.” Responding to reporters’ questions, Farberow stated, “We will seek out all persons with whom Marilyn had recently been associated.” On Wednesday, another press conference was held, and Farberow assured the media that there would be “no limitations” to the scope of the inquiry, and that the team would “go as far back in her life as necessary.” Yet another hurried press conference was held on August 14. The Suicide Squad had been on the job for scarcely a week, a week largely spent organizing press conferences, and Farberow announced that the Suicide Prevention Team had concluded that Marilyn Monroe was “an emotionally disturbed person who suffered from deep inner conflicts,” and their investigation