On the morning of August the 5th in 1962, Dr. Thomas Noguchi performed an autopsy on the corpse of Marilyn Monroe. At the time, Dr. Noguchi was 35 years old and a pathologist recently employed by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office.1Marilyn Monroe was 36 years old, the most famous actress in the world and an iconic sex symbol. That morning she became the most famous decedent in the world. As a result of Dr. Noguchi’s autopsy and the toxicology tests performed on her liver and unembalmed blood, Dr. Theodore Curphey, LA County’s Chief Medical Examiner (CME), declared during a press conference that a large ingested overdose of sedative drugs caused Marilyn’s death. Additionally, based on the results of a psychological autopsy, Dr. Curphey also announced that Marilyn’s death was a probable suicide.2The actress had a history of psychological disorders, namely depression, and a history of suicide attempts, four that her friends and acquaintances knew about. Possibly, Marilyn had attempted suicide even more than the four known times. Dr. Curphey closed Marilyn’s case with his declaration of probable suicide, his declaration that Marilyn Monroe had ended her own life. Dr. Curphey’s edicts were unpopular. His declaration of probable suicide was not accepted by most of the general public; and an ever diligent media targeted Dr. Noguchi’s autopsy report with complaints and accusations of incompetence and conspiracy, even alleging fraud. I have written at length about the controversies surrounding Marilyn’s tragic death and the autopsy performed by Dr. Noguchi; and I believe that I have reached the paradox of diminishing return regarding those topics. I can see no reason for a rehash. The purpose of this article is to examine why Dr. Noguchi inexplicably appears publicly every now and then to raise the specter that Marilyn was possibly murdered.
Dr. Noguchi published a memoir in 1983.3After all, why not? He had been involved in more than a few autopsies of fascinating and famous persons. He was also facing many challenges pertaining to his career as LA County’s CME. He began the chapter dedicated to Medical Examiner’s Case No. 81128, Marilyn Monroe, as follows:
It was incredible. On November 4, 1982, I was on my way by car to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office to be interviewed about a possible murder. The unbelievable factor was that the “murder” had occurred no less than twenty years earlier. But here in Los Angeles they were still officially investigating the questions which surrounded Marilyn Monroe’s death two decades before.
Because of Marilyn’s stature and her inordinate fame, the criticism of doctors Curphey and Noguchi continued unabated during the mid-sixties, throughout the seventies and into the early part of the eighties. By 1982, this criticism had become a veritable cacophony. A cavalcade of rogues like Frank Capell, Robert Slatzer, Milo Speriglio, Lionel Grandison, Anthony Scaduto, Fred Otash and many others, including the egocentric novelist, Norman Mailer, screamed murder and alleged a massive cover-up perpetrated at the highest levels of the local and the national governments. In an appearance before the LA County Board of Supervisors in 1982, armed with a righteousness worthy of those declaring a holy war, Speriglio and Slatzer then demanded a new investigation into the circumstances of Marilyn’s death (Spoto 605). Their entreaties demanding a new investigation finally worked. On the twentieth anniversary of Marilyn’s death, the DA of LA County, John Van de Kamp, initiated a threshold re-investigation, the expressed purpose of which was to determine if sufficient and verifiable new evidence, or peculiarities in the evidence revealed by the original investigation, actually existed; and if so, should the DA’s office re-open Marilyn’s case and undertake a full criminal investigation to determine if she was, in fact, a homicide victim.
The assistant DA at the time, Ronald Carroll, and the DA’s lead investigator, Alan Tomich, along with several other investigators, reviewed the case files for five months, conducted additional interviews and addressed all the questions raised by various conspiracists. The DA’s office then published, in December of 1982, a twenty-nine page summary report (SR): The Death of Marilyn Monroe: Report to the District Attorney.
When Dr. Noguchi reached the DA’s office on the November Thursday mentioned in his memoir, the receptionist directed him to an office where Ronald Carroll and Al Tomich were waiting to perform an interview. Their questions, according to Dr. Noguchi’s memoir, went right to the points that had bothered investigators for years (Coroner KE:3); they were interested in five points: the most important two were Marilyn’s empty stomach and the absence of pills or any evidence thereof in her digestive tract. Dr. Noguchi’s memoir noted the answers that he proffered. His answers were direct and more than just plausible. His answers were conclusive; but the conspiracists remained unsatisfied. They used the 1982 threshold re-investigation as additional grist for their murder and conspiracy mill.
During the re-investigation, the LADA consulted with Dr. Boyd Stephens, pathologist and CME for the community of San Francisco. Dr. Stephens received all the information pertaining to Marilyn’s autopsy. In short, after his review, Dr. Stephens spoke highly of Dr. Noguchi’s work, considering that the subject autopsy had been performed in 1962, and agreed with the conclusions that he reached. The summary report included these assertions:
Dr. Stephens reports that the methodology and the report itself reflect a legitimate, scientifically acceptable medical examination performed in accordance with the 1962 standards for such examinations. He further concludes that even the application of more advanced state of the art procedures [those used in 1982] would not, in all reasonable probability, change the ultimate conclusions reached by Dr. Noguchi in 1962 [and] based on the physical evidence memorialized in the Autopsy Report and the associated documents, he would have reached an identical conclusion, i.e., the subject died of acute barbiturate poisoning from the ingestion of an overdose. […] Dr. Stephens also believes that the relationship of the pentobarbital in the blood (4.5 mg. percent) to that in the liver (13.0 mg. percent) is medically significant (SR 3-4).
These assertions by Dr. Stephens will appear again later. The Summary Report concluded: Although factual discrepancies exist and unanswered questions surfaced in our probe, the cumulative evidence available to us fails to support any theory of criminal conduct relating to [Marilyn Monroe’s] death (SR 2). The Summary Report ended with the following succinct statement: Based on the information available, no further criminal investigation appears required into Miss Monroe’s death (SR 29). Even so, and of course, the conspiracists dismissed the preceding conclusions as self-serving: after all, the DA’s office was actively involved in the cover-up along with the CME’s office. Despite Dr. Stephens’ considered and educated conclusions, the conspiracists were still not pacified. The district attorney closed Marilyn’s case again. Still, accusations of misconduct and collusion by the LA County DA, the LAPD, and all the other acronyms that were allegedly involved in Marilyn’s death, like the MOB, FBI and CIA, have persisted unabated.
Why? Is publicity seeking the fountainhead? Certain individuals in Marilyn’s realm have used her death to engage in perverse and egregious self-promotion. Milo Speriglio, for instance. Both Robert Slatzer and Jeanne Carmen were known publicity whores. Even the egocentric Norman Mailer wrote his dishonest Marilyn novel disguised as a biography for a self-serving purpose. What about Gianni Russo and the way he has used Marilyn and her death? Certainly he is a publicity seeker; he has engaged in obvious publicity stunts, stunts designed to focus onto himself the spotlight of the Main Stream Media, which has even less integrity than Russo, Speriglio and Slatzer. The frequent appearance of publicity hounds who spout sensationalistic yarns keep all the lies about Marilyn alive.
ON HALLOWEEN IN 1985, UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL published an article entitled:”Noguchi Says Monroe Case Should Be Reopened.” The article began:
Former Coroner Thomas Noguchi, who conducted the autopsy on Marilyn Monroe in 1962, Wednesday suggested there is evidence indicating the actress did not take her own life and that the case should be reopened. Noguchi ruled the death a suicide in his original investigation, a finding that was confirmed by the District Attorney’s Office in a second probe 20 years later. “She had bruises on her back and near the back of the hip that have never been fully explained,” Noguchi said in an interview at a function in San Diego aired on KABC-TV Wednesday night.
Even though Ronald Carroll and Al Tomich had interviewed Dr. Noguchi three years earlier, they interviewed him again in 1985 at this home in Pasadena. The first question that Ronald Carroll asked Dr. Noguchi was this: Do you possess any new information at this time which you did not have in 1962 at your original report or did not have in 1982, if that’s better for you, when the District Attorney interviewed [you]? Noguchi answered: No, I don’t. When asked by Carroll, if he obtained any information which caused him to believe that Marilyn Monroe may have been a victim of foul play—any personal information? Dr. Noguchi answered: No. When asked if he had obtained any hearsay information pertaining to Marilyn’s death and foul play, the pathologist gave the following remarkable but nonetheless revealing answer: Information which are valid or not have been talked about mainly the book that’s written I believe (sic) … Tony Summers, but I don’t possess any independent information.The book referenced by Dr. Noguchi was Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, published in 1985. Therefore, either Dr. Noguchi’s assertion that he possessed evidence indicating the actress did not take her own life was a misrepresentation by the media or the interviewee was caught and possessed by the thrill created and opportunity provided to him by the interview.4
Fast forward four decades. In April of this year, Third State Books published L. A. Coroner: Dr. Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood, written by Anne Soon Choi, PhD, professor, historian and gerontologist. From an article written by John Valeri, published on True Crime’s website, 28 April 2025: Noguchi’s story of triumphs and travails is told in full for the first time in Anne Soon Choi’s L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood […], a compelling narrative that melds biography with culture, history, politics, and true crime. The book also received other accolades.
Professor Choi began her book with a brief history of coronerships, fundamentally a bureaucratic position which began in medieval England as a functionary appointed by the Crown to act primarily in the Crown’s interest. Coronerships followed the English settlers to America where the coroner became primarily a political appointee, a system, however, that suffered from two significant weaknesses: as a political appointee, the coroner could easily be manipulated and corrupted by politics and politicians; and a requirement that the coroner have some type of association with medicine or the medical profession did not exist. Over time, the requirements for the office of the coroner evolved and changed; and with the start of the 20th century, Eastern American cities began to adopt a medical examiner system that required a trained forensic pathologist at its helm (Choi 17). By 1950, a majority of large American cities had adopted a coroner, medical examiner, pathologist system to investigate and explain significant deaths to an interested general public. The one notable exception was Los Angeles. That would change in 1957 with the appointment of Dr. Theodore Curphey to the position of LA County Coroner and CME. Evidently, Dr. Curphey had an enormous ego, and he also had a few enormous plans for the CME’s office.
Even though Dr. Curphey instituted and nurtured more than a few improvements at the offices of the CME, technological improvements and equipment upgrades, staff and budget increases, during his ten-year tenure, the department of the coroner remained understaffed and underfunded. Still, his main goal was to improve the public’s perception of the CME’s office, change its perception from a bureaucracy distressed by scandal and controversy into an efficiently managed department operated by the best forensic pathologists that he could hire. Dr. Curphey began a calculated campaign to recruit the most qualified candidates from local medical schools (Choi 18), a campaign which eventually led to Dr. Thomas Noguchi.
During his tenure as a deputy coroner and pathologist, Dr. Noguchi observed his predecessor’s demeanor and his behavior. Due to Dr. Curphey’s frequent arrogance, hard charging and apologize later approach, he was often called curt, rude and unfeeling; but still, Dr. Noguchi was a receptive and an enthusiastic student. Regarding the press conference during which Dr. Curphey announced the cause and mode of Marilyn’s death, Anne Choi wrote the following:
As Noguchi took in the scene, he must have envisioned what his future might be. If he played his cards right, he could be the man in front of the camera. The person quoted in the papers and recognized on sight. A political player in the country. […] He was determined to be more than the “average brainless, unimaginative medical examiner,” more than a county employee pushing paper for the rest of his career. He would make sure that he was the face of forensic medicine in Los Angeles. But in the meantime, Noguchi had figured out something important. He wanted to be chief coroner (Choi 26).
Dr. Noguchi recognized that the position of CME would place him squarely in the limelight, transform him into a figure of real importance. He also recognized that having him, a Japanese immigrant, in that position, especially in a large metropolitan area like LA, would mean a great deal to the Japanese people, particularly to those who had and those who would immigrate to America, hoping to cut for themselves a slice of the American Dream.
After Dr. Curphey retired in 1967, the Board of Supervisors appointed Dr. Noguchi CME for LA County. However, the County Medical Association and the leadership hierarchies of UCLA, USC and other local medical schools, opposed Dr. Noguchi’s appointment to that significant position. According to Anne Choi, the opposition was the result of racism and prejudice against Japanese immigrants that lingered even twenty plus years after WW2, prejudice that was especially prevalent in Los Angeles where the epithet Jap was commonly used. Despite the opposition noted above, the large LA County Employees Association (LACEA) threatened to strike and instigate other legal actions if Dr. Noguchi’s appointment was not approved.5
Once installed in his position as CME, Dr. Noguchi continued the improvements instituted by his predecessor and continued to modernize the procedures of the CME’s office, implementing and thereby capitalizing on scientific developments that placed death investigation in the hands of board-certified forensic pathologists. He also became an advocate for the independence of the CME, whereby the Coroner’s Office would no longer operate at the beck and call of law enforcement and the District Attorney’s Office (Choi 12). But despite his ardent efforts and improvements, the first year as CME of LA County was not without controversy, what Anne Choi even noted was the doctor’s equal parts of brilliance and self-aggrandizing (Choi 10). The doctor intended to realize his goal of becoming the face of forensic medicine in Los Angeles.
Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June of 1968 in LA. While the autopsy of Marilyn Monroe was significant in the career of Dr. Noguchi, the autopsy that the pathologist performed on the corpse of the former attorney general, and current presidential candidate, led to his installation as the
permanent chief coroner after he received nearly unanimous praise from local and national press and even the White House for his meticulous autopsy of Robert F. Kennedy, which is still considered by many forensic pathologists as the “perfect autopsy.” The public validation of his forensic expertise worked to assuage the humiliation that surrounded his appointment and stoked his desire for the limelight and developed his keen sense of self-promotion (Choi 12: emphasis mine.)
Self-promotion: ahhh … that’s the rub. But Dr. Noguchi possessed other idiosyncrasies that many affiliated with him considered objectionable. According to Anne Choi, the pathologist was so tenacious that many looked upon that otherwise admirable trait as a Noguchi fault; he was intensely independent and challenged the prevailing political harmony; he did not care what other person’s thought and usually dismissed their opinions; moreover, he always believed that he was right. Even though these traits earned Dr. Noguchi some grudging respect, they also earned him more than a handful of influential and powerful enemies.
Additionally, his headline-grabbing antics, his showmanship when he held one of his many press conferences or appeared on television and local talk radio […] also drew disdain and open ridicule from members of the Board of Supervisors to whom he reported […] (Choi 13). His showmanship and his many celebrity autopsies transformed him into The Coroner to the Stars, a coroner almost as famous as the celebrities whose deaths he investigated and whose bodies he autopsied. Despite his many forensic accomplishments, his incessant pursuit of the limelight would ultimately end his career as chief coroner; and ultimately his own hubris led to his downfall (Choi 9-11).
In 1969, reeling from accusations of incompetence and malfeasance, Dr. Noguchi tendered his resignation as CME in early February and then rescinded it with a telegram in March: Please do not act on my resignation, the telegram read, as I am withdrawing it (Choi 76). The subsequent struggle to regain his coronership consumed five rancorous months crammed with meetings, both public and private, involved many attorneys, many interested associations of powerful persons, both for and against the CME, who, of course, delivered many memorable performances for the media and their never weary cameras.6Finally, on July the 31st in 1969, the Civil Service Commission announced that, by unanimous vote, Dr. Noguchi had been re-instated as LA County CME; he would also receive back pay. That, however, was neither the end of Dr. Noguchi’s story nor the end of his travails.
When the Board of Supervisor’s Chairman, Michael Antonovich, appeared before the press in 1982, he noted how routinely Dr. Noguchi convened press conferences after the deaths of celebrities and routinely [turned] the aftermaths of many deaths into a “circus” to “grab headlines” (Vitacco-Robles ICON: WKMM:V2, 293). The coroner’s office and the CME both had been under investigation prior to Antonovich’s press conference, an investigation triggered by a litany of accusations and charges, generally malfeasance, but specifically, incompetence, abuse of power, moonlighting and accepting payment there for, improper handling of corpses and other remains, including fetal remains, misplacing, even losing evidence. and theft from the dead. Accordingly, Dr. Noguchi was pegged into the hole of a poor administrator. There are other accusations involving the CME and staff members that I could mention here, but several of them are simply disgusting; and I do not want to engage in sensationalism. What is noteworthy is this: even though Dr. Noguchi had been ordered to stop sensationalizing and editorializing about celebrity deaths, he simply could not desist. Thusly, the proverbial straw that broke the weary Camel’s back involved two movie stars and Dr. Noguchi’s ill-advised commentary.
William Holden died on November the 12th in 1981. Seventeen days later, Natalie Wood died. William Holden was an Academy Award winner; but Natalie Wood, despite her three nominations in the category of best actress, never won an Oscar. Even so, she won the hearts of millions around the world.
Dr. Noguchi ruled that neither movie star was a victim of homicide or suicide: both had died accidentally, William Holden from a fall inside his residence and Natalie Wood also from a fall which led to her Pacific Ocean drowning. As Anne Choi observed: If he had left it at that, things might have turned out differently for him in the long run. But he just couldn’t help himself. He looked out at the crowd and plowed ahead, meaning he publicly reported details about each movie star’s death that caused an uproar, that each movie star was drunk—Holden was very drunk, Dr. Noguchi revealed—at the time of their accidental deaths. Robert Wagner, Natalie’s husband at the time, called Noguchi a camera hog who felt that he had to stoke the publicity fire in order to maintain the level of attention he’d gotten use to (Choi 190: both quotations). A resident of Laguna Beach wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times, which the newspaper published in November of 1981. Theodore Taylor asserted that Dr. Noguchi possessed a “forensic personal publicity kit” for celebrity deaths and that “Holden’s untimely death was tragic enough without the further burden of self-seeking ghoulism” (Choi 192). It goes without saying, of course, that all the preceding was bad enough, but Dr. Noguchi’s comments and theorizing speculations infuriated a man who was extremely powerful and an icon in Hollywood and across the world: Old Blue Eyes. Frank Sinatra.
On March the 11th in 1982, Frank Sinatra appeared before the Board of Supervisors, who were holding an emergency session to discuss the fate of Dr. Noguchi. Sinatra only appeared because he wanted to hand deliver a letter. In his letter to the Board, Sinatra asserted that he was offended and particularly troubled by Dr. Noguchi’s antics and sensational statements, apparently designed to garner headlines and publicity for himself, often at the expense of entertainers and other well-known individuals (Choi 202). Why would Frank Sinatra, otherwise known as “The Chairman of the Board,” involve himself in the fate of LA County’s CME? Here’s why. Robert Wagner was once in a relationship with Sinatra’s daughter, Christina; and while Natalie was divorced from Wagner, she became briefly involved with Frank; but the singer still considered them to be close friends; and he considered Dr. Noguchi’s comments about those close friends to be cavalier. The CME had inadvertently created a powerful enemy; and after this powerful enemy hand delivered his letter to the Board, demanding the dismissal, demanding the firing of Dr. Noguchi, he left without making a public statement. “The Chairman of the Board” had accomplished his goal: the damage had been done.
Following Sinatra’s departure, the Board of Supervisors met for four hours and discussed what to do with Dr. Noguchi. Even though they discussed dismissing him, in the end the Board decided to suspend Dr. Noguchi without pay for thirty days. His suspension would begin on March the 19th; but when that day arrived, the Board rescinded their decision. Then pivoting yet again, on March the 29th, the Board announced their unanimous decision to suspend Dr. Noguchi. The second suspension held.
On April the 15th, Dr. Noguchi and his attorney appeared at a public hearing before the Civil Service Commission. Then the following day, April the 16th, doctor and attorney attended a private session of the supervisory board. After a protracted meeting and private deliberations, the Board of Supervisors announced that Dr. Noguchi had been demoted to the position of physician specialist within the department. He was no longer CME of Los Angeles County. The attorney representing the new physician specialist announced that they both were determined to fight on to the end (Choi 209). And … Dr. Noguchi’s demotion was not the end.
In July of 1982, the Civil Service Commission began a hearing that consumed seven weeks. During that time, many experts delivered testimony and counter testimony, for and against Dr. Noguchi’s demotion. Sara Adler, an attorney and mediator, listened to and took notes regarding the testimony. Ms Adler took four months to prepare her eighty plus page report. Released on February the 12th in 1983, her report asserted that Dr. Noguchi’s suspension was warranted, but his demotion was not. Although Ms Adler criticized Dr. Noguchi’s poor management of the coroner’s office, in her assessment, poor management did not justify his demotion. Fundamentally, she had ruled in favor of Dr. Noguchi, a ruling that the Civil Service Commission publicly accepted; however, the commission still voted to uphold Dr. Noguchi’s demotion; and a second hearing did not alter that outcome.
Declaring the he would yet again be returned to the office of CME, Dr. Noguchi filed a $1M lawsuit against the County of Los Angeles. In June of 1984, after a hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge, Norman Epstein, ruled against reinstating Dr. Noguchi, who then appealed Judge Epstein’s decision; but in 1986, the courts denied his appeal. Finally, in March of 1987, the California State Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the lower appeals court. Dr. Noguchi’s fight for reinstatement, a fight that earned him the moniker of “The Fighting Coroner,” was over. The Board of Supervisors finally appointed Dr. Ronald Kornblum to the position of LA County’s Chief Medical Examiner.
Returning briefly to his 1982 interview with Ron Carroll and Al Tomich that I referenced earlier and the questions posed by the assistant DA, Dr. Noguchi’s memoir noted the answers that he proffered; but writers and other skeptics viewed Marilyn’s empty stomach as a major inconsistency that needed to be questioned: how could Marilyn have swallowed so many capsules and digested them all before she died? Marilyn’s stomach, Dr. Noguchi asserted, was accustomed to the pills since she was an addict and like food a person frequently eats, the pills were quickly and easily moved into her intestines. Regarding suicides of habitual barbiturate abusers, he added, he seldom encountered visible evidence of the ingested pills. Remarkably enough, in 1986, Dr. Noguchi once again addressed the issue of Marilyn’s empty stomach and asserted that the absence of pill residue was common in barbiturate suicides, particularly with drugs ingested into an empty stomach. He reiterated that he had encountered empty stomachs during the autopsies of many barbiturate suicides.
In 2003, Dr. Nicholas Cozzi, a pharmacologist, appeared on the television program, “Unsolved History: The Death of Marilyn Monroe,” a Discovery Channel production. He had several experiments to perform. Dr. Cozzi’s purpose was to replicate, as closely as possible, the action of Marilyn’s digestive tract and in so doing, answer the following question: why was Marilyn’s digestive tract devoid of any evidence proving that she actually swallowed a large quantity of Nembutal capsules? Without repeating all the details of that program, Dr. Cozzi’s well planned and calibrated experiments clearly demonstrated these two essential points: Nembutal capsules disintegrate and dissolve rapidly; and Marilyn could have swallowed a large quantity of pills and any evidence of them would have disappeared from her stomach long before she died. Dr. Cozzi speculated that Marilyn lived approximately 1½ hours after she lost consciousness, or approximately 2 hours after she ingested the capsules.7Therefore, Dr. Cozzi stated: The simplest explanation is that she took 24 or 25 doses of Nembutal in one episode with the intention of committing suicide.
The late Dr. Cyril Wecht, a world renowned pathologist, offered the same assessment as Dr. Noguchi’s, noting that with an empty stomach, digestion and absorption of the ingested pills can occur rapidly, within an hour or even less. He also noted that habitual users of certain drugs develop a faster metabolism and a tolerance, not unlike the tolerance developed by morphine or heroin addicts. Most persons expect that the pathologist will find undigested pills in the suicide’s stomachs, Wecht asserted; but his experience indicated otherwise since most suicides live long enough to experience a loss of consciousness, stupor, semi-coma and coma. During the dying process, the stomach continues digesting. In his book, Tales From the Morgue, published in 2005, Dr. Wecht once again addressed Marilyn’s case and her autopsy, noting that he did not find the absence of undigested pills or pill residue in Marilyn’s stomach to be problematic since her stomach was empty at the time that she ingested the pills. With a stomach free of food, he stated yet again, any ingested material would be digested and absorbed more rapidly than normal. It is important to note here, Dr. Wecht opined that Marilyn possibly lived a few hours after she ingested the Nembutal, echoing the opinion of Dr. Cozzi, a similar opinion expressed by Dr. Stephens that was included in the district attorney’s 1982 summary report. After noting the ratio of pentobarbital in Marilyn’s blood and liver, essentially a 1 to 3 ratio,8Dr. Stephens stated: To me, that suggests that the person live[d] for quite a period of time [after ingestion of the drugs]. It also suggests that there is not a large reservoir left in the stomach or gastrointestinal tract to be drawing from (SR 4). In point of fact, Marilyn could have survived in a semi-coma and then a coma even longer than 2 hours after ingesting the Nembutal.
Anne Choi’s biography of Dr. Noguchi dedicated one chapter, only eleven of its two-hundred and fifty-five pages to Marilyn Monroe and the autopsy performed by her biographical subject. Within that chapter, the author noted that the doctor was troubled by a few aspects of the autopsy. I called her death a suicide, he wrote in his 1982 memoir, both twenty years ago and today—but I admit there are many disturbing questions that have remained unanswered (Noguchi Coroner KE:1). Neither Anne Choi nor Dr. Noguchi provided any deep or compelling analysis regarding what the troubling aspects or the unanswered questions might be. Anne Choi mentioned that Dr. Raymond Abernathy, LA County’s Head Toxicologist, for instance, did not drug test the dissections of Marilyn’s organs. Without a complete analysis, the biographer wrote, it was impossible to rule out that Monroe had died by injection rather than swallowing the pills (Choi 26). However, according to my research, the preceding assertion is not exactly correct. Also, according to Anne Choi, the absence of undigested pills in Marilyn’s stomach surprised Dr. Noguchi, an assertion that contradicted the doctor’s testimony over the years regarding the absence of undigested pill controversy, and as detailed above, contradicted the testimony of other pathologists who have reviewed and commented on Dr. Noguchi’s work. Professor Choi mentioned what she called fresh bruises on Marilyn’s hip and lower back, which troubled Dr. Noguchi (Choi 21). In actuality, Marilyn’s body displayed only one fresh bruise on the upper portion of her left hip or the upper portion of her left buttock. While Dr. Noguchi has expressed his concern about that bruise over the years, in his memoir, he asserted the following:
Monroe’s ecchymosis [bruise] was dark, which meant it was fresh. But was it connected to her death, or recently incurred in some normal fashion, such as bumping into a table for example. At the time of the autopsy, I did not believe it was a trauma connected to her death. […] Nevertheless, that fresh bruise on her hip still remains unexplained (Noguchi Coroner KE:3).
Regarding the failure to tests the dissections of Marilyn’s organ, in his memoir Dr. Noguchi offered the following lengthy explanation:
Along with the liver, I had submitted specimens of blood for alcohol and barbiturate examination. In addition, I had forwarded other organs, including, most importantly, the stomach and its contents, and the intestine, for “further toxicological study.” Now I instantly noted that the lab technicians had not tested the other organs I had sent them. They had examined only the blood and the liver.
Why this failure to perform all the tests, which is a routine procedure in the department today? The evidence found in the analysis of the blood and the liver, together with the empty bottle of Nembutal and the partly empty (forty pills missing out of fifty) bottle of chloral hydrate, pointed so overwhelmingly to suicide that the head toxicologist, Raymond J, Abernathy, apparently felt there was no need to test any further. Specifically, the blood tests showed 8.0 mg% of chloral hydrate, and the liver showed 13.0 mg% of pentobarbital (Nembutal), both well above the fatal dosages.
Still I should have insisted that all the organs, including the contents of the stomach and segments of the intestine, be analyzed. But I didn’t follow through as I should have. As a junior member of the staff, I didn’t feel I could challenge the department heads on procedure, and the evidence had persuaded me as wells as the toxicologists that Marilyn had ingested a sufficient amount of drugs to cause death (Noguchi Coroner KE:1).
Upon release of the CME’s findings, the media noticed the absence of organ testing. Dr. Noguchi contacted Dr. Abernathy and inquired about the organs. which, at that time, could have been tested.
I was disappointed when he said: “I’m sorry, but I disposed of them because we had closed the case,” for I knew the media would charge a cover-up. I was right. A variety of murder theories would spring up almost instantly—and persist to this day (Noguchi Coroner KE:1).
The lengthy quotation above, taken from Dr. Noguchi’s memoir, contains the following omission: the test of Marilyn’s unembalmed blood rendered a concentration of 4.5 mg% pentobarbital, while the concentration in her liver, 13.0 mg%, was virtually three times as much. There is a reason for this difference. The reason follows hereafter.
Briefly and simply, when narcotics enter the human body via a hypodermic injection, regardless of type, whether intravenous, intramuscular or subcutaneous, only a small fraction of it passes through the liver on its initial trip through and distribution to the body’s organs. On the other hand, drugs that enter the body through the stomach and the intestines, 100% of the portion of the drug that has been absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract, will enter the portal vein which will take the drug directly to the liver where a high degree of biotransformation or metabolism occurs, known as first pass metabolism. According to Drugs.com, barbiturates, Nembutal in particular, are weak short-acting acids which are rapidly absorbed and distributed throughout the human body resulting in high liver concentrations and corresponding concentrations in the brain and the kidneys. Additionally, Nembutal is metabolized primarily by the hepatic microsomal enzyme system and then commonly excreted in the urine and less commonly in the feces. In short, more of the Nembutal that Marilyn ingested on August the 4th would have been in her liver than in her blood. The quantities found would depend, of course, on the exact time that she swallowed the drugs that night; however, finding a higher concentration of drugs in Marilyn’s liver than the concentration in her blood, three times the concentration, is consistent with an orally ingested overdose, a consistency and a medical significance observed and noted by Dr. Boyd Stephens. If Marilyn had received a hot shot, an injection, the ratio of the drug’s concentration in her blood and liver would have been reversed. Also, an injection large enough to cause the level of drug concentration in her body would have caused a rapid death, meaning that the level of concentration in her liver could not have been attained.
In 1982, Ronald Carroll and Al Tomich interviewed Dr. Ronald Kornblum, who had recently replaced Dr. Noguchi as LA County’s CME. As reported by Gary Vitacco-Robles, Dr. Kornblum reviewed the autopsy report and asserted that the level of the Nembutal in Marilyn’s liver meant that the dosage had been in her system for an extended period. Most of the drug content had passed from the stomach to the blood and was predominantly present in the liver. […] In summary, Kornblum’s responses corroborated and concurred with Noguchi’s assertions about Marilyn’s death (Vitacco-Robles ICON:WKMM:V2, 312-313). Marilyn killed herself.
THE EVER PRESENT MEDIA JOINS THE SCRABBLE
Both before and after its publication, articles that extolled Anne Choi’s book appeared on a number of websites. Okeedoke! The main problem? The articles were not always accurate or even honest. MSN, Yahoo, The Daily Express, Grunge, A&E, The Mirror US and of course, The National Enquirer along with its sister publication, The Daily Mail, joined the scrabble with their special brand of journalism, a term I use reluctantly.
The article’s headlines, printed in bold block letters, ran the gamut of sensationalism. For instance, The National Enquirer proclaimed: Coroner Who Performed Marilyn Monroe’s Autopsy Reveals Shocking New Details About Botched Exam. MSN followed along with this headline: Coroner for Marilyn Monroe’s Autopsy Makes Explosive Claim 60 Years After Her Death; but the award must be given to Radar on Line and this headline: Coroner Who Performed Marilyn Monroe’s Autopsy FINALLY Tells All: Thomas Noguchi, 98, Declares He ‘Was a Pawn in Their Cover-up’ on 63rd Anniversary of Blonde Bombshell’s Mysterious Death. The errors and misrepresentations in the associated articles reverberated inside the media’s risible echo chamber. For example, The National Enquirer asserted:
The coroner who performed the autopsy on Marilyn Monroe is breaking his 63-year silence to reveal he never agreed that the cause of her death was suicide and was even prohibited from probing into whether the tragic blond bombshell was murdered—possibly to silence her from spilling secrets about the politically powerful Kennedy family (per Daily Mail).
The preceding quotation represents a completely false fabrication by The Daily Mail, which was then repeated by The National Enquirer. Firstly, as proven by testimony offered over the years, Marilyn’s autopsy was not a botched endeavor. Secondly, Dr. Noguchi agreed on many occasions that Marilyn’s death was a suicide. In his memoir, he asserted that he called her death a suicide in 1962 and also in 1982, despite some unanswered questions. Thirdly, Dr. Noguchi never said that he was prevented by his superiors from investigating if the blonde actress had possibly been murdered. What he said is this: the lack of testing the organs that he dissected left room for the development of conspiracy theories involving murder; and he felt, at that time in 1962, he did not have enough standing in the CME’s office to question Dr. Curphey, the chief coroner, or Dr. Abernathy, the chief toxicologist, regarding procedures.
Dr. Abernathy decided not to perform any additional tests because the tests he had performed pointed overwhelmingly to suicide. Why incur the additional expense since the CME’s office was especially underfunded.9
Several of the articles made this fantastic claim: The true crime biography describes the sex symbol’s autopsy and its findings in detail. Not true. Anne Choi’s publication included very little information about the actual autopsy performed by Dr. Noguchi. Several of the articles also made this patently false statement: As stated in the book LA Coroner, released earlier this year, the officer [Noguchi] revealed that key evidence that could’ve confirmed or contradicted Monroe’s cause of passing was destroyed before he could examine it, a reference to Marilyn’s dissected organs, Dr. Noguchi created the dissections of Marilyn’s organs; and at the time he dissected them, he noted in his memoir, he also examined them using a microscope.
Virtually each article asserted that the destruction of Marilyn’s organ and dissections occurred after the coroner’s office published Marilyn’s autopsy report. Not true. Dr. Abernathy destroyed Marilyn’s organs and dissections thereof only after Dr. Curphey officially announced Marilyn’s cause and mode of death, which officially closed Marilyn’s case. It was Standard Operating Procedure of the CME’s office in 1962 to destroy retained organs and related dissections once the subject case had been officially closed, in other words, officially adjudicated. Dr. Abernathy’s compliance with standard procedures did not have a nefarious intent as intimated by the disingenuous media; but then—false intimations are SOP for the Media.
AND IN CONCLUSION
So, what is the point? What does all the preceding actually mean? What did Marilyn’s autopsy actually reveal and confirm about her death?
Her autopsy revealed that she was not injected with the drugs that killed her. The Nembutal and the Chloral hydrate entered her body via her mouth, her esophagus, her stomach and her intestines; the barbiturates entered her body enterally. And so, her autopsy confirmed that she was not murdered, not by an enema or a suppository, as has been asserted by various conspiracists writers. Marilyn swallowed the capsules that caused her to die. Also, for all intents and purposes, or by extension if you prefer, her autopsy confirmed that a massive cover-up was not perpetrated by her murderers, the middle Kennedy Brothers usually, following her death. Finally, in my opinion, her autopsy proved that her overdose was not accidental.
Why did Dr. Noguchi appear now, sixty-three years after Marilyn’s death and her entombment at Pierce Brothers Cemetery, only to announce that her case should be reopened; and too, what could a new investigation at this moment in history possibly reveal? Allow me to answer the second question first.
According to my research, considering that the casket containing Marilyn’s body was placed in a tomb or crypt above ground, if she had been exhumed during the first decade following her entombment, some soft tissues might have remained; however, any tissue that remained would have disintegrated within the next decade or during the twenty years following her entombment: only her skeleton would remain after two decades. During the ensuing forty-three years, four plus decades, her bones would, more than likely, have disintegrated. There is a remote possibility that her body would have become mummified or desiccated, containing little or no moisture. Possibly something could be learned from such a corpse. Even so, I never located an actual statement regarding exactly what. In 1982, when questioned about exhuming Marilyn’s remains for additional study, even Dr. Noguchi admitted that a toxicological analysis of the desiccated tissue or any organs that remained would possibly reveal the presence of heavy metals, but nothing more (Vitacco-Robles ICON:WCMM:V3, 295).
That being the case, would reopening Marilyn’s case provide any answers to the lingering questions about which Dr. Noguchi expressed concern? The short answer is: NO. In his memoir, he wrote the following: But, of course, the investigation two decades after the fact could not answer the few legitimate questions that remained. There was no way, for example, it could determine the source of the bruise on Marilyn’s hip (Noguchi Coroner KE:3). So, that being the case, an investigation sixty-three years after the fact will not solve the riddle of that small bruise, a bruise that certainly troubles the former CME. He has mentioned that bruise on several occasions over the years, while also admitting that what actually caused the bruise will never be known, while also writing with regard to Marilyn’s mode of death: In my opinion, Dr. Curphey’s official conclusion stated the situation correctly (if evasively): “probable suicide.” On the basis of my involvement in the case, beginning with the autopsy, I would call Monroe’s suicide “very probable” (Coroner KE:3). To place an exclamation point here, Dr. Litman, one of the nation’s leading authorities on suicide, told Dr. Noguchi, based on the information the psychological autopsy team received from Marilyn’s friends and associates, he had no doubt that Marilyn Monroe killed herself.
Still, the question about why Dr. Noguchi said what he said about a third investigation into Marilyn’s death remains unanswered. Does Anne Choi’s biography provide a fundamental answer, considering what her biography reveals about Dr. Noguchi?
Clearly, Dr. Noguchi is a talented pathologist who, even at the age of ninety-eight, remains active and vital in the field of forensic medicine. Even so, maybe his recent appearances and performances before the media are for Dr. Noguchi’s benefit. He admitted that, in 1982, he developed an irrational thought, an irrational fear that he might become a suspect in Marilyn’s murder, even though, at the time, he called her death a suicide. Labeling that thought, that fear irrational is not just sugar coating it, it’s covering that fear in rich, deep dark chocolate. That fear, if it did not border on insane paranoia, was certainly a type of absurdist thinking; but then, if he had become a suspect in the murder of Marilyn Monroe, he would have found himself squarely in the spotlight, which leads me to this conclusion, to this end. Just like most of the celebrities that he autopsied before and during his tenure as the face of forensic medicine in Los Angeles, Dr. Noguchi suffered and even now suffers from an addiction, just not an addiction to drugs or alcohol; but like an egocentric three ring circus performer who must perform only in the spotlight of the center ring, Dr. Noguchi was and remains addicted to the limelight, the spotlight, the publicity that kept him in focus in his center ring of a forensic circus of death. What other reason could there be?