Like Ward Wood, my investigation into the life of Lynn Franklin did not produce a wealth of information, at least not beyond the information contained in three books he would later write; and his testimony is altogether different than Wood’s testimony, more complex and more complicated, certainly more difficult to assess. While it is discomforting to accuse a policeman of promoting falsehoods, and a highly decorated one at that, what Franklin asserted in his 1999 publication certainly points to that possibility; but I will let you, the reader and Marilyn’s fans, decide.

Born in Mississippi in 1922, Franklin eventually headed west to find work in California where he joined the Beverly Hills Police Department. After his days patrolling the streets of Beverly Hills, Franklin became that police department’s first undercover detective. In his undercover role, he became the most frequently and highly decorated member of that relatively small law enforcement agency; but after twenty-two years with the Beverly Hills force, Franklin became frustrated, generally with America’s corrupt judicial system but particularly with the corruption in Los Angeles County. As a result, Franklin retired and wrote his first book, a denunciation of corrupt lawyers, crooked judges and an exposé of the manner with which they inhibited and often even prevented the effective prosecution of obviously guilty and dangerous criminals. Published in 1976, the fundamental message of Sawed-Off Justice was also the author’s personal declaration: tougher enforcement of existing laws, along with a tougher approach to criminals, was the only way to battle rising crime in America.

Ten years later, Franklin published The Beverly Hills Cop Story; but according to most reviewers, his cop story was simply Sawed-Off Justice dressed in a new suit of clothes. Then in 1999, he published The Beverly Hills Murder File, a book in which he recounted his involvement in several controversial and sensational cases. Within the text of his second and third publications, Franklin revealed that several persons, but primarily city hall officials and members of various police departments, wanted him dead; so on three occasions, his enemies attempted to assassinate him. During one of those unsuccessful attempts, Franklin even killed his assailant, which resulted in an unprosecuted murder charge against the former undercover detective. In The Beverly Hills Murder File, Franklin also recounted the 1962 events of August and his relationship to those events.

As I have already noted, Franklin testified that he stopped a speeding, Peter Lawford driven Lincoln just after midnight on August the 5th in 1962. Franklin asserted that he knew Lawford and referred to him with an easy familiarity as Pete. Franklin asked what in the hell Pete thought he was doing? Pete answered: I’m trying to get the Attorney General to the hotel to pick-up his luggage and then to the airport. Which hotel? Franklin inquired. The Beverly Hilton. Franklin informed Lawford that they were traveling in the wrong direction, noting that the Beverly Hilton was behind them. From the backseat, the attorney general angrily offered a comment directed at Pete: I told you stupid! After providing Lawford with directions to the Beverly Hilton, he allowed the men to proceed without issuing a speeding citation to Lawford. Franklin apparently did not speak to the attorney general and the attorney general did not speak to Franklin, according to his 1999 narrative, anyway. A few hours later, Franklin learned of Marilyn’s death; and using photographs, he eventually identified the man seated beside Lawford as Dr. Ralph Greenson, the psychiatrist who treated Marilyn that same night.

Franklin asserted that he had met Marilyn Monroe casually on several occasions, noting that Beverly Hill’s COPs eventually meet each and every celebrity, casually. Additionally, Franklin asserted, he was a member of Nikita Khrushchev’s security detail when the Soviet Premier, in 1959, visited Beverly Hills during the dictator’s goodwill tour of the continental United States. While guarding Khrushchev, Franklin observed Marilyn and a couple of her friends as they attempted to retrieve their cars from valet parking, or so he alleged, just as the Soviet premier arrived at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Due to the excitement and the security situation caused by Khrushchev’s arrival, Marilyn and friends had to wait; but once the premier exited his limousine, a State Department official approached Marilyn and asked her to pose for a photograph with the dictator. She consented; but according to Franklin, the smile she arranged on her face appeared to be forced. Franklin did not provide an exact date or time for this encounter between the movie star and the Soviet premier.

Even though he had no official involvement in Marilyn’s case, he possessed an innate curiosity regarding details that appeared to misfit; and too, he liked Marilyn. She was very amiable and unusually charming, according to Franklin’s assessment; but she was also unusually insecure, a beautiful and seductive young woman who easily attracted men but also easily lost them. His unusual encounter with Lawford, Greenson and the attorney general early on August the 5th seemed odd and seemed to misfit; therefore, the misfit of events, along with his innate curiosity and good feelings about Marilyn, led him on Monday, August the 6th, to the visit the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where Charlie Hugo, an acquaintance of Franklin’s, was also its security chief.

Hugo confirmed for Franklin that Robert Kennedy was, in fact, at the Beverly Hilton the previous day, August the 5th. Hugo also confirmed that the attorney general’s signature was on the register. The security chief procured a copy for the undercover detective. Then on Wednesday, August the 8th, the day of Marilyn’s funeral, two Secret Service Agents appeared at the Beverly Hills Police Department for a visit with Franklin. They asked him to surrender his copy of the hotel registration page. Franklin did not explain just how the Secret Service knew that he possessed a copy of that all important document; but Franklin refused to surrender his copy and returned to the Beverly Hilton the following day, August the 9th.

Charlie Hugo was not there; but the man substituting for him allowed Franklin to look at the registration book. Even though the book’s pages appeared to be identical to the Charlie Hugo provided copy, the attorney general’s name was missing. He knew the Secret Service had worked some of their magic to protect Robert Kennedy and obscure the facts about Marilyn’s death; so he was glad that he possessed a copy of that registration page; but, believe it or not, Franklin’s copy of that monumental page, the one on which Robert Kennedy had inscribed his famous name, mysteriously disappeared.

Before ending his recollections about Marilyn’s case and his involvement therewith, Franklin noted that he appeared on KTLA’s 1992 docudrama, The Marilyn Files, along with former LAPD sergeant, Jack Clemmons. After speaking about Marilyn’s murder with Sgt Clemmons, while taping portions of the program, Franklin received a telephone call from Fred Otash, the infamous private detective who appears prominently in a later section. During Franklin’s telephone conversation with Otash, the private detective revealed that LAPD Sgt Marvin Iannone, one of the officers involved in the investigation of Marilyn’s death, was a dirty COP. According to Otash according to Franklin, Iannone was directly involved in the cover-up orchestrated by the United States Government and the Kennedy clan to obscure the facts surrounding Marilyn’s murder. In fact, Otash announced, according to Franklin, Iannone’s career advanced as a reward for his participation in that sinister and clever cover-up. Later in 1962, Iannone was promoted to the rank of Captain and transferred to the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division; Iannone was subsequently promoted to and became the LAPD’s very first assistant chief; and finally, he was appointed the Beverly Hills Police Department’s chief in 1985, twenty-three years after Marilyn’s death, a reward that was rather slow arriving, sort of like molasses on a cold winter morning.1Despite my ardent efforts, I was not been able to learn the date of Marvin Iannone’s promotion to the very first assistant police chief of Los Angeles.

A week after Franklin spoke with the private detective in 1992, a quarter inch audio tape, meaning reel-to-reel, appeared in Franklin’s mail; but its brown paper packaging had obviously been opened and resealed. Franklin attempted to play the 1962 vintage tape; but it was empty. Obviously the tape had been erased or had merely succumbed to the debilitating effects of time. Even so, Otash had included a typewritten accounting of what the tape contained: a wiretapped conversation between Pete and Iannone which allegedly occurred on August the 4th in 1962 between 5:00 PM and 12:00 midnight and a frantic telephone call to the LAPD’s Purdue Station, made by Pete, who asked for Iannone; however, the police sergeant was not there. Pete placed that telephone call, according to Franklin, at 1:45 AM on Sunday August the 5th. Franklin did not attempt to contact Otash for two weeks after receiving the empty tape; and when he finally did telephone Otash, the private detective had been discovered dead. Otash died on October the 5th in 1992.

In Franklin’s opinion, both the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office so thoroughly botched their investigations into Marilyn’s death that uncertainty and questions still remained: was the blonde movie star murdered or did she commit suicide? Franklin was convinced, though, that Marilyn was, in fact, murdered; and the early morning encounter with Lawford, Greenson and Robert Kennedy, three men who Franklin knew had participated in Marilyn’s homicide, occurred while the latter’s get-away was in progress. Franklin knew that an official cover-up, an official cover story was in the process of preparation; but since he had no official involvement in Marilyn’s case, Franklin asserted in his 1999 book, and the murder was not even in the jurisdiction of the BHPD, he simply terminated his investigation and suppressed his innate curiosity. At this point, I could raise questions about Franklin’s purported reaction, his decision to drop the case, and accuse him of dereliction of duty, accuse him of hypocrisy; but I will stop short of doing so. Franklin’s behavior as an agent of law enforcement is not the main issue; the main issue is whether or not we should believe Lynn Franklin’s incredible story.2All the quotations from The Beverly Hills Murder File can be found between pages 106 and 113. Please refer to the bibliography.

It is relatively easy for me to believe that Lynn Franklin possibly met Marilyn Monroe while he performed his duties as a patrolman within the city limits of Beverly Hills, even though his assessment of her fundamental problem was not exactly accurate. His story, however, began to disintegrate for me when he evoked the name of Nikita Khrushchev and alleged that he observed Marilyn as she encountered the Soviet premier at the Beverly Hills Hotel and also alleged that the observed encounter was the only time she ever met the Soviet dictator. Franklin implied in his 1999 narrative that Marilyn’s encounter with Nikita Khrushchev was strictly coincidental. He also implied that the actress and the dictator did not meet at any planned events; however, historically speaking, that was not the case.

The events leading to September the 19th in 1959, the day Marilyn met Nikita Khrushchev in Hollywood at 20th Century-Fox, which is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, not Beverly Hills, were relatively easy to establish. In fact, there are websites dedicated to that historic visit and Khrushchev’s itinerary.

Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and his entourage, which included his wife and six family members, along with a security detail, landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on September the 15th in 1959. During the next few days, they were shuttled between the nation’s capital and New York City, accompanied by various government officials, like UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, II. While that shuttling transpired, Marilyn was with Arthur Miller at his farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, where they lived at the time. The actress did not travel to Southern California until the 18th of September. After her airplane landed, she answered a few questions from the press, one of which was whether she believed Khrushchev actually wanted to meet her? She simply responded, I hope he does, and then proceeded to the Beverly Hills Hotel along with her usual cortege of her make-up artist, her hair dresser and her personal masseur, Ralph Roberts.

The following morning, Marilyn transformed herself, along with the assistance of her aids, into the glamorous movie star and then took a chauffeured limousine to Fox Studios. Khrushchev did not arrive in Los Angeles until slightly after 12:00 noon on the 19th of September, specifically to attend the luncheon arranged and sponsored by 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation and its president, Spyros Skouras. By that time, Marilyn and her escort, the movie producer Frank Taylor,3Because of Arthur Miller’s history with the American Communist Party and his earlier troubles with the House Un-American Activities Committee, he was not invited to attend the Khrushchev luncheon. Taylor flew from New York City with Marilyn, along with several others persons, and then escorted her to the luncheon.were already seated at their centralized table in the Café de Paris, Fox’s swank and exclusive commissary. More than a few other actors, movie stars, movie producers and directors also attended the historic luncheon; and they watched Khrushchev’s vehicular train arrive through the agency of electronic magic: television.

After lunch and after speeches, one by Skouras and one by Khrushchev, during which he complained because he and his family would not be allowed to visit Disneyland, Marilyn and the Soviet Premier met, shook hands and talked briefly. Marilyn issued a greeting to Khrushchev from her husband, Arthur Miller, a man, according to Khrushchev, who was very much respected by the Soviet people. At that time, photographers snapped photo-graphs of Marilyn, both with and without Khrushchev. Soon thereafter, Marilyn departed and returned to the Beverly Hills Hotel while the Soviets visited a sound stage to observe a scene from Can-Can, a risqué musical in production at Fox starring Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine. Apparently the Soviets, particularly Nina, Nikita’s wife, were not impressed, but only slightly repulsed, by what they considered to be the vulgar dancing and infelicitous antics.

Their planned visit to Disneyland nixed by the LAPD chief, William Parker, who informed Ambassador Lodge that the LAPD could not guarantee the Khrushchev’s safety, a new plan for the afternoon had to be quickly formulated:4“Nikita Khrushchev Goes to Hollywood.” Peter Carlson. Smithsonian Magazine. Jul 2009. <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nikita-khrushchev-goes-to-hollywood-30668979/>the Soviet’s handlers took the entourage on a tour of tract housing developments instead.

According to an article which appeared on the website, Mouse Planet,5“Khrushchev and Disneyland.” Wade Simpson Mouse Planet 23 Jan 2008.
<https://www.mouseplanet.com/8232/Khrushchev_and_Disneyland>the slow moving caravan also toured the UCLA campus and several shopping centers; and even though his handlers advised the Soviet Premier that he could stop anywhere along the route, Khrushchev was in a petulant mood and hardly looked out the window of his closed limousine. The lengthy train of long limousines, other automobiles, squad cars and motorcycle COPs crept along the citizen lined streets of Los Angeles before finally aiming itself toward the Ambassador Hotel. That evening, the Khrushchevs attended a dinner at the Ambassador hosted by a contentious Los Angeles Mayor, Norris Poulson, who offended Khrushchev and the other Soviets. Marilyn lounged in her suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel while Khrushchev and his family lounged and spent the night of September the 19th at the Ambassador.

On the 20th, Marilyn attended meetings with the management of Fox regarding her next film project, Let’s Make Love. She then boarded an airplane, returned to the east coast and Arthur Miller. Khrushchev boarded an early morning train at Union Station and traveled up the California coast to San Francisco.6“A Quiet Khrushchev Leaves for SF”, The Daily Mirror, Los Angeles History.
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/page/268/>The entourage visited several cities and states during the next seven days before returning to the District of Columbia. Khrushchev and his family departed for Moscow late on the evening of September the 27th. The Soviet Premier visited the United States only once more, during September of 1960; but his movements were restricted to Manhattan and a Long Island estate owned by the USSR. Marilyn’s encounter with Nikita Khrushchev following the luncheon at Fox was the only time she met the Soviet Premier.

According to Wade Simpson, Major General Nikolai S. Zakharov of the Soviet Security Police came to Los Angeles three weeks before Khrushchev’s visit to review security arrangements with Los Angeles Police Chief William H. Parker.7Op. Cit. Simpson. There are no indications that Chief Parker included the Beverly Hills Police Department in his discussions with General Zakharov; and according to what I have also read, more than a few plain clothes Soviet policeman, who traveled with the premier’s entourage, along with agents of the FBI and the Secret Service, provided Khrushchev’s main security. While Khrushchev visited Los Angeles, the LAPD provided additional policeman and protection.

I found many articles and websites dedicated to the history of the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. Each memorialized its history and mentioned many of the eminent persons who both visited and slept there: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon, King Albert of Belgium, the Crown Prince of Monaco and Grace Kelly, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, John Lennon and Elizabeth Taylor after many of her many weddings. Several articles and web sites noted that Marilyn and Yves Montand were guests of the hotel during the filming of Let’s Make Love and that Marilyn’s favorite bungalow was number 7. However, none of the articles or web sites mentioned Nikita Khrushchev. Apparently, he never visited nor slept at the famous inn of Beverly Hills. That fact, when combined with all of the preceding, certainly renders all of Franklin’s testimony, and all of what he asserted in his 1999 publication about Marilyn Monroe, severely suspect.

There are other elements of Franklin’s narrative that are certainly dubious. For example, why would someone go to the trouble of intercepting the reel-to-reel tape allegedly sent to Franklin by Fred Otash via the USPS, open the package, erase the tape, repackage the tape and then ensure that Franklin received it along with Otash’s typewritten log still included? That certainly seems implausible. Would it not have been much simpler to just destroy the tape to prevent Franklin from knowing that such a tape even existed? Or at least destroy the log to prevent Franklin from knowing what the tape originally contained? And why would Otash send Franklin a damaged tape? Besides, if Franklin did not actually hear the contents of the tape that he allegedly received, how could he conclusively testify to any telephone conversations or additional dialogue the tape might have contained? Besides, were the protectors of Robert Kennedy still on guard twenty-four years after his death and thirty years after Marilyn’s death, still eavesdropping on telephone calls and watching the mail? I certainly find that possibility difficult to believe and accept.

Additionally, Franklin’s copy of the registration page allegedly signed by Robert Kennedy disappeared from the trunk of his car, of all places. Franklin was unclear regarding when he searched for that page among the other stuff in his car’s trunk, possibly 1977, possibly much later. At any rate, why did he store the registration page in such a precarious place? He was certainly positive, however, regarding the thief who pinched that piece of important evidence: Hugo Schwartz, a Beverly Hills Police Lieutenant and one of Franklin’s many co-COP enemies.

When Robert Kennedy visited Los Angeles on August the 4th in 1962 and registered at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, how did his presence escape the eyes of the media, both written and spoken, radio and television? How? And if the attorney general visited Los Angeles on that Saturday in 1962 with the intent of being surreptitious, why would he allow himself to be seen and actually sign a hotel register? For him to have done that was absolutely nonsensical.

Finally, to close this loop for now, Franklin invoked the name James Hall, an ambulance attendant who appears prominently in a later section along with the reappearance of Detective Franklin. Hall also appeared with Franklin on KTLA’s 1992 docudrama, The Marilyn Files. The ambulance driver and attendant confirmed for Franklin that both Sgt Marvin Iannone and Pete Lawford were present when Dr. Ralph Greenson arrived at 12305 Fifth Helena and murdered Marilyn Monroe during the early morning hours of August the 5th. So, Franklin’s contention that Greenson was the doctor who treated Marilyn on the night of her death, meaning, we must conclude, that Greenson assisted her through a medical or a psychological crisis, was nonsensically odd to say the least.

A long parade of long limousines and other automobiles must have traveled a serpentine route as the Russian’s afternoon guides instigated the afternoon’s revised site seeing tour of west Los Angeles and Century Center, a tour which also included visiting the campus of UCLA, housing tracts and shopping centers. Eventually, the lengthy caravan of cars festooned with official flags, along with their police escorts, certainly looking something like a centipede, directed itself westward onto Wilshire Boulevard and traveled to the boulevard’s 3400 block where the Ambassador Hotel, now demolished, stood in 1959. It is entirely possible that Khrushchev and his retinue actually traveled through Beverly Hills’ city limits before reaching the Ambassador; but unquestionably, the long, arthropodan motorcade did not come to a stop or visit the Beverly Hills Hotel. So, did Officer Lynn Franklin observe a chance encounter between Nikita and Marilyn at the Beverly Hills Hotel prior to their encounter on the 19th of September; and was the police officer a member of Nikita’s security detail?

While it is possible that Lynn Franklin might have been one of many uniformed officers standing along the curbside, certainly and evidently, Franklin did not observe the chance encounter between the actress and the dictator as he described; and in my opinion, the answer to the question regarding Franklin’s involvement with the Khrushchev security detail is fairly obvious, at least, once again, in my opinion; but please, answer the question for yourself. Also, in my opinion, as I have previously noted, all of the preceding renders all of Lynn Franklin’s testimony and what he asserted about stopping Lawford, Greenson and Robert Kennedy at 12:10 AM on the 5th of August suspect while also generating reasonable doubt. That early morning routine traffic stop will prominently appear again, later.