Who Killed Marilyn Monroe?

Once the former Norma Jeane Mortenson made the perilous ascension from a B-movie extra to a timeless Hollywood icon, whatever Marilyn you see depends on your point of view: An overrated, less-than-meets-the-eye sex symbol? An incredibly talented but frustrated and misunderstood actress who died tragically young? A neurotic, boozy pillhead? Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine.

But now there's another label somebody's trying to affix to the Marilyn Monroe legend: murder victim.

In Goddess: The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, Anthony Summers claims that Marilyn was murdered to cover-up her sexual involvement with John and Robert Kennedy. When the controversial biography was published, this almost-libelous and unsubstantiated rumor was hotly debated, ignored, denounced, helped sell a couple of books, and then was quickly forgotten.

But now this ugly slur has come back. Philippe Mora, a Los Angeles-based Australian writer and director, has uncovered an FBI document that supposedly implicates actor Peter Lawford, Monroe's psychiatrist, staff, her publicist and the late U.S. Attorney-General in the plot to get rid of the troubled starlet.

"Lawford is reported as having made 'special arrangements' with Marilyn's psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson, from Beverley Hills," the detailed three-page report states. " The psychiatrist was treating Marilyn for emotional problems and getting her off the use of barbiturates. On her last visit to him he prescribed Seconal tablets and gave her a prescription for 60 of them, which was unusual in quantity especially since he saw her frequently. On the date of her death ... her housekeeper put the bottle of pills on the night table. It is reported that the housekeeper and Marilyn's personal secretary and press agent, Pat Newcomb, were co-operating in the plan to induce suicide."

What do I think?

No. I don't believe it.

Not from the thin evidence I see here, anyway.

I'm sorry, but if there are skeletons hanging in the Kennedys' closets, the bones being put out for sale by this hack are fake.

And, just to clarify, I'm not a dewy-eyed romantic either. For all of RFK's golden promise and humanity, I know he was also a cold and hard bastard when he needed to be. Those old photographs of Roy Cohn by Bobby's side won't go away.

Still, I don't smell the cordite from this smoking gun, and I don't think anybody else does either. As much as the Republicans hate the Kennedy mythos, if there were any juicy tidbits from this scandal to be used to embarrass the royal family of American politics, we would have seen it on Fox News already. No, I don't believe Robert F. Kennedy was complicit in the death of Marilyn Monroe.

Not to say, however, that he's entirely without guilt. Marilyn was a beautiful but vulnerable woman who was a much better actress (Niagara, The Misfits) than she was given credit for, and she was abused by powerful Daddy figures that threw her away her like a soiled tissue. Bobby was one of those rapists.

I don't think Robert F. Kennedy murdered Marilyn Monroe. But I bet he wasn't sorry when she died.

Marilyn Monroe died on August 4, 1962, but her legend lives on.

Sadly, so do the rumors.