Obviously, as clearly noted on the preceding report, Mrs. Murray’s first noticed the burning light at approximately 12:00 AM; but she did not become alarmed by that light until about 3:30, the time, according to her testimony, that she telephoned Dr. Greenson. Obviously, then, the time modifications noted in the subsequent follow-up police reports did not represent a story or testimony alteration, as alleged by Sgt Jack Clemmons: the alteration was actually a clarification.

As I have already noted herein, the ever present Robert Slatzer interviewed Jack Clemmons for the former’s 1974 publication, The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe. By then, Jack Clemmons was a disgraced former sergeant due to his forced resignation from the LAPD as a result of the Thomas Kuchel Incident. Despite that fact, former Sgt Clemmons testified to Slatzer as follows:

The maid told me she saw a light under the door about ten o’clock, but she didn’t think too much of it. Then she said she woke up again about midnight and tried to get in and found the door locked. And she said she became disturbed and she called the doctor. As I recall, this is what was told to me at the time (Slatzer 285: emphasis mine).

As I recall―remarkably, Jack Clemmons admitted that his 1974 testimony to Robert Slatzer was merely a recollection of Mrs. Murray’s August the 5th account, perhaps a selective recollection. His admission certainly transformed that testimony into an evasive and equivocal uncertainty rendered a full twelve years after the events of that August weekend. Likewise, Clemmons’ 1974 testimony completely contradicted what Mrs. Murray actually told Sgt Byron and what he, Sgt Byron, recorded upon his arrival at Fifth Helena just a few minutes prior to Sgt Clemmons’ departure. Once again, Mrs. Murray did not actually alter her story; Sgt Clemmons altered her story: the time of 10:00 PM that Sgt Clemmons included in the 1974 account delivered to Robert Slatzer does not appear on any of the officially filed police reports.

Furthermore, Sgt Byron arrived prior to Sgt Clemmons’ departure; and their time at Marilyn’s hacienda evidently overlapped slightly. So, when did and where did Mrs. Murray, doctors Greenson and Engelberg convene to devise their sinister plot to alter their story and thereby deceive the COPs? Clemmons’ contention that Mrs. Murray and the doctors conspired secretly to alter their testimony does not appear to be supported by the actual facts.

I hasten to denote here, once again, that by August of 1962, without a doubt, Sgt Clemmons was already involved with Frank Capell. Clemmons even admitted that he met Capell a few months before Marilyn’s death, a fact even noted by Anthony Summers. Most certainly the two Kennedy haters had already developed and started to enact their anti-Communism and anti-Kennedy crusade. Most certainly, it is reasonable to conclude that Sgt Clemmons had already started to elicit information from sources within the LAPD, perhaps even to plant false information or stoke the unfounded rumors already circulating within that police department about Robert Kennedy’s alleged affair with Marilyn Monroe. It is likewise certain that Frank Capell had already started to organize and compose his anti-Robert Kennedy pamphlet, The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe, which Capell would publish in 1964 just ahead of the Thomas Kuchel defamation scandal, a scandal, as already noted in the preceding subsection, that included Sgt Jack Clemmons. All things considered, not a word that Jack Clemmons ever uttered about Marilyn’s death, or the circumstances pertaining to that unfortunate tragedy, should be accepted at face value. Besides, do you, like me, find it more than slightly curious that the police sergeant who first arrived at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive that Sunday morning did not bother to file any type of official report? And what a corkscrew of fate: of the many hundreds of men who could have answered Dr. Hyman Engelberg’s telephone call to the LAPD that morning, it just happened to be Sgt Jack Clemmons.

Still, I must report, as was her propensity, years later during subsequent interviews, Mrs. Murray changed her story about the visible light acting as the trigger of her concern. It was not the visible light; the trigger was a telephone cord running beneath the door. I must also report that the instigator of the telephone cord modification appears to have been none other than Robert F. Slatzer, who, In his 1992 publication, The Marilyn Files, reported the following:

[…] I pointed out that the high pile on Marilyn’s newly installed carpet would have prevented light from escaping under the door, she claimed to have been mistaken before: It was the sight of the telephone cord stretched under the bedroom door that had alarmed her, not the light (Slatzer Files 170-171).

Robert Slatzer’s preposterous opinion, unfortunately, motivated the malleable housekeeper to modify her story, at least according to his 1992 publication; but light would have been visible beneath Marilyn’s bedroom door regardless of the carpet’s thickness. Preventing the passage of light requires specially designed and installed seals: thick wool carpet does not qualify. Additionally, any type of  cord running under the door would have depressed the carpet pile and would have most certainly allowed the passage light around it. As usual, Robert Slatzer was simply wrong; but before I leave our right honorable friend, Marilyn’s discredited weekend husband, I must denote: along with his incorrect assertion about thick carpet preventing the passage of light, other problems exist with Slatzer’s anecdote involving his interview with the malleable Eunice Murray. Allow me to digress briefly.

In Slatzer’s 1974 publication about Marilyn’s curious death, he referenced an interview with Mrs. Murray which transpired in August of 1973; he did not identify the actual date or day of the week on which the interview transpired (Slatzer 30). Later in that literary effort, Slatzer asserted: I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mrs. Eunice Murray, and she reconstructed from memory the events of that last Saturday (Slatzer 266: emphasis mine). Obviously Slatzer was referring to his purported 1973 interview with Mrs. Murray, an interview that he putatively taped. If you recall, Slatzer claimed to have a large notebook filled with copious notes and letters from Marilyn, along with many taped interviews, more than a few of them actually with the blonde movie star; but her alleged weekend husband never produced any of that information and none of that information has surfaced during the passing parade of decades. Also, as I noted in Section 4, Will Fowler, just one of the many secret co-writers who actually wrote Slatzer’s 1974 publication, never received any of the notes, letters or taped recordings promised by Slatzer, which caused Fowler to withdraw from Slatzer’s writing project. Fowler began to doubt Slatzer’s honesty, if you can imagine that.

While Robert Slatzer did not identify the actual calendar date of his taped interview with Eunice Murray, Donald Wolfe did; but Wolfe’s attributed date suffers from a serious problem: he translated the date back in time eleven years to 1962 just one day after Marilyn’s funeral. Wolfe asserted:

After Marilyn Monroe’s friend Robert Slatzer learned of her death, he went to the Monroe residence with executrix, Inez Melson, on Thursday, August 9. Slatzer noted that the recently installed carpeting was so thick that it was difficult to close Marilyn’s bedroom door. The door scraped along the surface of the carpet, and it was impossible to see light beneath it. Murray, who was present during Slatzer’s discovery, admitted that he was correct and that she must have been mistaken (Wolfe 17).

In Robert Slatzer’s 1974 publication, in which he initially mentioned his taped interview with Mrs. Murray, Inez Melson appeared only twice. According to Slatzer, after Marilyn’s death, Inez Melson acquired an empty file cabinet, which was delivered to W.N. Davis, at 9110 Sunset Boulevard, in Los Angeles, the same business address as that of Marilyn’s mother’s conservator, Mrs. Inez C. Melson (Slatzer 18); and then he noted that Inez initiated a proceeding in New York objecting to the probate of the will, Marilyn’s will, that is (Slatzer 327). Slatzer did not mention that Mrs. Melson was involved in his 1973 Eunice Murray interview; and he certainly did not mention an interview with either woman that transpired in August of 1962. In fact, Donald Wolfe’s translation of the alleged Melson–Murray interview to the day following Marilyn’s funeral is problematic, to say the least. Here’s why.

On August the 11th, just three days after Marilyn’s funeral, the Columbus Star featured a gossip section article, which I previously referenced in Section 4. Written by Paul Pry, Jr., the article clearly indicated that Slatzer was in Ohio when Marilyn died: Bob Slatzer read in Monday’s paper, the article noted, that Marilyn Monroe’s body lay unclaimed in a Los Angeles morgue.1WRFC, Folder 24, File 5, pages 84 and 85.Obviously, Monday’s paper referred to August the 6th’s Columbus Star. Over the years following Marilyn’s death, Slatzer asserted several times that he attempted to claim Marilyn’s body and arrange for her burial, which appears to be disproven by the Columbus Star article: Slatzer was in Ohio on August the 6th in 1962, reading about the movie star’s unclaimed remains before sending three dozen white roses to Los Angeles in memory of the girl who had been my friend, my sweetheart, and my wife (Slatzer 299), an alleged generous gesture left unmentioned in the Columbus Star article. Additionally, the article did not indicate that Slatzer had recently visited or planned to visit Los Angeles during the following days or that he planned to claim his friend’s body. In fact, the article noted that Slatzer’s last and most recent contact with Marilyn was an alleged forty-five minute telephone chat that had transpired two weeks ago. That being the case, that alleged telephone call had transpired during Marilyn’s visit to Cal-Neva Lodge the last weekend in July. Suffer me to express a more than reasonable doubt regarding the purported telephone chat; but other contradictory and dubious declarations about his geographic location at the time of Marilyn’s death and her funeral, along with other reliable sources who described Marilyn’s funeral, appear to prove conclusively that Robert Slatzer was nowhere near the Westwood Village Memorial Park in 1962 on August the 8th; but the habitual fantasist apparently could not resist this fantasy: At Marilyn’s house with Inez Melson before the burial services, Slatzer wrote in the introduction to his 1992 publication, I again saw the places she loved so much and realized that now all those high hopes had died, too. Thirty years after the Columbus Star article placed him in Ohio, Slatzer remarkably recalled that he attended Marilyn’s funeral with Inez Melson; and yet, the memoir written by Marilyn’s sister, Berniece Miracle, recalled Marilyn’s funeral in detail along with some intimate but disconsolate interactions with Inez Melson. Berniece did not mention the presence of Marilyn’s purported second husband, Robert Slatzer; and not one of the many photographs snapped on August the 8th in 1962 and not one of the many newsreels or home movies that captured Marilyn’s interment revealed the presence of Robert Slatzer, who, in his 1974 publication declared the following: I was at my home in Columbus, Ohio. It was early Sunday morning, August 5, 1962, when the persistent ringing of the phone roused me from an exhausted short-lived sleep. Slatzer’s close friend and neighbor unceremoniously, succinctly relayed the bad news: Marilyn’s dead (Slatzer 49). Then later in the same publication, Slatzer remarkably declared:

On the afternoon on the funeral I was at home in Columbus with four close friends […]. Late Wednesday afternoon, after the others had gone, Emerson Burkhart and I were left alone to empty the last bottle of brandy. The only one of the group who had ever met Marilyn, Burkhart was deeply moved by her death. […] After Emerson left, I felt lost. I didn’t feel much like staying at home alone, so I slipped into some old clothes, grabbed my hip boots, pulled out my favorite St. Croix fly rod, and drove into the autumn countryside. In the fading afternoon, which Marilyn had loved so much, I fished for bass in a secluded spot at Greenwood Lake, in Delaware County, Ohio (Slatzer 299).

I, for one, must express much confusion and incredulity, the shameless dishonestly of Robert Slatzer notwithstanding. Was he in Los Angeles with Inez Melson on August the 8th in 1962, or was he with friends that afternoon and then later that day, alone with his memories and sad thoughts as he fished for the bass that lived and swam in Ohio’s Greenwood Lake? I suppose, in 1962, Slatzer could have boarded a red-eye flight in Columbus and arrived in Los Angeles in time for an interview with Inez Melson and Eunice Murray sometime on the afternoon of the 9th; but that evidently did not occur, as the following clearly proves.

On the day following Marilyn’s funeral, the 9th of August in 1962, the day Donald Wolfe asserted that Slatzer actually interviewed Inez Melson and Eunice Murray together, the memoir written by Marilyn’s sister, which included her recitation of that day’s events, reported that August the 9th began in Milton Rudin’s office, an early morning meeting with Aaron Frosch to discuss Marilyn’s “Last Will and Testament.” After that meeting, Berniece and her daughter, Mona Rae, returned to 12305 Fifth Helena, along with Inez Melson, where they searched through Marilyn’s belongings and documents. According to Mona Rae:

After the funeral, Inez, who was appointed by Frosch and the court to act as administrator, and I, and Cherie [Redmond], a secretary who had done some work for Marilyn, spent three days at Marilyn’s home checking through all her belongings. I was there just to help in an unofficial capacity (Miracle 224-225).

Mona Rae recalled that her mother sat tearfully at her task, hour after hour, as the three women [picked] through stacks of paper like amateur archaeologists (Miracle 225). Within the pages of Berniece’s memoir, Robert Slatzer is completely absent, nowhere to be found. In addition to Slatzer’s absence from Berniece’s memoir and her chronicle of those August the 9th events, Berniece, along with Cherie Redmond, are also absent from the events of August the 9th and the Melson–Murray interview as reported by the conspiracist Donald Wolfe; but then Wolfe, like many others, blindly believed Robert Slatzer. Donald Wolfe, like Anthony Summers, evidently never read Robert Slatzer’s fraudulent publications. We are left, once again, to wonder why?

Unquestionably, Eunice Murray altered her story regarding the visible light and telephone cord running beneath Marilyn’s bedroom door; but unquestionably, also, she did not alter her story in 1962: she must have altered her story in 1973 under unknown circumstances; and she was not standing within the walls of 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, either. The only explanation I can offer regarding why Donald Wolfe time shifted Slatzer’s alleged interview with Mrs. Murray, making it contemporaneous to Marilyn’s death is this: to give Sgt Jack Clemmons’ allegation that the housekeeper altered her testimony for nefarious and sinister reasons some validity. Still, all the yarns and stories that precede lead to the following facetious assertion: Slatzer must have been cloned, so there must have been multiple identical Slatzers; that must have been the case, and not one of those multiple, time traveling Slatzers had the ability to tell the truth.

The conspiracists invariably launch into a paroxysm of questions and speculations about the actions of the suspicious and unholy trinity as they lingered for practically four suspicious hours with Marilyn’s corpse that Sunday morning. Did the unholy trinity discuss the stories each would tell the police or did the three collectively decide that Greenson would be their spokesperson? Did they destroy tangible evidence of murder as many conspiracists have dutifully alleged? Did they find an explanatory suicide note, which they then destroyed? Did they find Marilyn’s Little Red Diary, her Red Book of Secrets, and dutifully destroy it, also? Because the three persons present that morning obviously participated in the nefarious murder plot and subsequent cover-up, the conspiracists have speculated that many dark and ugly activities transpired that tragic morning, during those mysteriously missing  hours.

And yet, the amount of time that actually elapsed after the doctors arrived, Dr. Engelberg pronounced Marilyn dead and he then telephoned the police department was either 50 minutes, using the times noted on Brukles’ August the 5th report, or 35 minutes, using the times noted on Byron’s original August the 5th report and his follow-up report of August the 6th, not the almost four hours asserted by Jack Clemmons and others.

Still, even a brief 35 minutes seems too long for Dr. Greenson, Dr. Engelberg and Mrs. Murray to linger in Marilyn’s hacienda with her corpse; and I readily concede that I do not know precisely how they occupied themselves during that elapsing time. I know what the doctors asserted: they talked among themselves briefly, an activity that seems only natural and reasonable. Then, perhaps, each fell momentarily silent as the pulse of their beating hearts resounded in their temples, as each considered the night’s crushing event and the significance of Marilyn Monroe, the adored celebrity and world famous actress, now irreversibly dead. Perhaps they even momentarily wept. Perhaps criminations were hurled, doctor to doctor to housekeeper: How could this have happened? How in God’s name? The precarious nature of their predicament must have hit them squarely in their faces as fear and dread began to increase their tension and anxiety.

Many other assertions regarding what happened on the morning of August the 5th have been offered over the many passing years: the arrival of government agents who proceeded to ransack Marilyn’s possessions in search of her Little Red Diary and other evidence linking her to the middle Kennedy brothers; the removal and the destruction of any discovered evidence; the arrival of this private eye and that private eye to remove recording and bugging devices and audio tapes and also to clean every surface in Marilyn’s hacienda, even the fruit in the bottom of the fruit bowls, in order to remove any and all fingerprints; the arrival of a deception team dispatched by Robert Kennedy through the LAPD Chief. A veritable army of individuals, some wearing uniforms and some wearing street clothes, must have descended upon 12305 Fifth Helena Drive that Sunday morning in August of 1962; and the number of persons involved in the subsequent murder cover-up must have numbered in the several hundreds of thousands.

But in the end, it must be noted: not one conspiracist has presented one piece of credible or verifiable evidence resulting in proof that anything sinister actually occurred on the morning of August the 5th in 1962.