A Contrived Murder Scenario

Near the end of Collateral Damage, Mark Shaw revealed his hypothetical Marilyn murder scenario; but before I launch into my analysis of his hypothesis, allow me to briefly discuss what the Hollywood Godfather has asserted to be factual.

According to Gianni Russo, Robert Kennedy hired a MOB assassin to eliminate, to murder his rejected lover. A guy known as The Doctor murdered Marilyn, Russo testified to Michael Kaplan for a 2019 New York Post article that appeared on March the 2nd. The Doctor was a killer for hire and an actual MD who performed major hits for the mob […]. This unnamed Doctor injected air into the vein near Marilyn’s pubic region, which rendered the injection site invisible, Russo reported to Kaplan, although Russo did not specify which vein or which part of Marilyn’s geography received the injection: what does near mean exactly? How near is near?

In Russo’s aberrant world, Marilyn died of an embolism, but it looked like drugs to the coroner, just a garden variety overdose; and I am not being the least bit facetious. While possibly the most inventive of Marilyn’s Murder Orthodoxies, Russo’s embolism tarradiddle is also certainly the most ludicrous. At any rate, I give him an A for Amagination and an F for Foolishness. How could a venous gas embolism create the lethal concentrations of Chloral hydrate and pentobarbital in Marilyn’s blood and liver? How could that air bubble trick both the tests performed by the head toxicologist and also the head toxicologist into interpreting the tests as indicating the presence of drugs, indicating a massive overdose, when, in fact, the drugs did not even exist?―that is, according to Gianni Russo. I assume every death from an embolism has been misdiagnosed as a drug overdose. Despite the ludicrous nature of Russo’s fairy tale, it has been reported by many newspapers, magazines and Internet articles as the absolute truth; and yet, the most remarkable aspect of this curiosity is this: Mark Shaw actually asserted that Russo’s incredibly imbecilic fairy tale had some credence. Once again, I am not being the least bit facetious.

An insane number of theories pertaining to the death of Marilyn Monroe have been developed and presented as fact during the past fifty-nine years, at least twelve. The conspiracist authors who developed and presented those theories invariably contended that theirs was factual, the Last Word regarding the who, the when, the how and the why of Marilyn’s perceived to be mysterious death, her murder. Still, all of those theories did not satisfy Mark Shaw; therefore, he developed one of this very own. Let’s call his new theory Number 13. According to Shaw, Number 13 went down as follows.

Sometime near midnight, unable to sleep, Marilyn heard a noise at her front door. Upon opening the door, two gloved men assaulted her and stunned her by placing a chloroform-sealed cloth over her nose and mouth. Once stunned, the two men either dragged or carried Marilyn into her bedroom; and during that relocation, the men hit her lower body against a sturdy piece of furniture, or the open door’s edge or the doorknob. That inadvertent whack bruised Marilyn’s left hip. Once in her bedroom, the murderers removed any outer clothing she was wearing such as a robe or panties; and then they carefully positioned her nude body on the floor face down. At this point, one of the men switched on the light and then locked the door so they would not be disturbed. Water secured from the bedroom faucet, mixed with a lethal dose of both the Chloral hydrate and Nembutal became the ammunition for the murder weapon.

The murderers then dipped a bulb syringe of some sort into the drug mixture and then inserted the tip into Marilyn’s rectum, with some spillage possible. Quickly, the lethal dose would have infiltrated her blood system and begun the march to her death. Her murderers then placed Marilyn’s body face down on her bed and placed the telephone receiver in her hand for effect. After cleaning up as best they could, the two murderers quietly left the home through the bedroom door (Shaw 612-613), which they locked on the way out.

There are numerous problems with the preceding theoretical scenario. I’ll begin with time.

The alleged time that the murderers began the gruesome process of murdering Marilyn, midnight on August the 4th, creates a serious issue for Shaw. According to both Don and Guy Hockett, who collected Marilyn’s body at Fifth Helena and took her to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary where she stayed briefly, her body was so rigid, they had trouble placing her on the gurney. They asserted, based on the degree of rigor mortis and the presence of fixed lividity, that Marilyn died sometime near 10:00 PM on Friday, the 4th, a time also asserted and supported by the mortuary employees. The Hocketts also noted that her skin was cold to the touch.

In 1962, the actress Natalie Trundy was Arthur Jacob’s fiancé. Natalie later said that she and Arthur attended a concert on the evening of August the 4th; and near the end of a concert, at approximately 11:00 PM, an usher arrived and informed Jacobs, then Marilyn’s publicist, that she was either nearly dead or already dead.

The temperature of Marilyn’s liver at 10:30 AM on August the 5th, the time that Dr. Noguchi began her autopsy, as noted on her autopsy report, was 89°F, 9.6°F below what is considered normal. Virtually all the conspiracist writers have ignored that fact, including Shaw. According to the Glaister Equation, a formula used to calculate a person’s possible time of death, using a temperature differential from normal of 9.6°F, Marilyn could have died between the hours of 9:30 PM on the 4th of August and 2:30 AM on the 5th of August with a mean time of 12:30 AM on the 5th. Regardless of what time Marilyn’s essential bodily functions ceased, the exact time she actually died, it is evident that she became an unresponsive, comatose body at some point prior to 12:00 midnight, an essential detail; therefore, Shaw’s murderers would not have encountered a conscious Marilyn near midnight on August the 4th.

Consider the chloroform-sealed cloth that the murderers pressed against Marilyn’s nose and mouth. Did Shaw mean chloroform-soaked? At any rate, the use of chloroform to render a person unconscious is a myth started and perpetuated by Hollywood movie makers. Evidently, the time required to knock-out a person using a chloroformed rag varies between five and ten minutes; and since liquid chloroform quickly evaporates into a gas when exposed to the air, fresh liquid chloroform must be constantly added to the rag. Also, for the person to remain unconscious for an extended period of time, a freshly chloroformed rag must be held continually against the person’s nose and mouth; but then, Shaw alleged, that the chloroform stunned Marilyn. A stunned person would be groggy or dizzy, dazed. If Marilyn was only dazed by the chloroform, according to my research into the longevity of its affects, Marilyn would have regained her senses rather quickly: the affects of chloroform, in its gaseous state, diminish and disappear rapidly.

Shaw’s assertion that the murderers left the home through the bedroom door is an odd statement. As indicated by the floor plan of Marilyn’s hacienda, her bedroom did not have a door allowing access to the exterior. That is why Dr. Greenson had to enter Marilyn’s bedroom through one of the casement windows. I have concluded that Shaw’s assertion about the murderers getaway route is just another example of his many misstatements.

Mark Shaw’s Murder Weapon: A Bulb Syringe of Some Sort

A major problem with Shaw’s contrived murder scenario resides in his vague description of how the assassins actually killed the movie star. They used a bulb syringe of some sort, which they dipped into a drug solution and then they inserted the bulb syringe’s tip into Marilyn’s rectum. By bulb syringe, did Shaw mean the type of syringe often used to remove ear wax, irrigate sinuses and remove mucous from the nostrils of infants? Certainly the killers drew a quantity of the drug solution into the bulb syringe which they then injected into Marilyn’s rectum; but Shaw did not actually say that. Still, Marilyn could not have been killed with a normal size bulb syringe, one that could have dispensed two, maybe three ounces of the drug solution.

The largest bulb syringe I located could have dispensed twenty ounces, or 2½ cups, of the drug solution; but using a bulb syringe that large would have created its own set of problems. Shaw admitted that some spillage would have been possible; but certainly trying to infuse Marilyn’s rectum with 2½ cups of liquid using a large bulb syringe would have resulted in more than just some spillage. In fact, I contend, if she was unconscious, the spillage would have been considerable and would have stained Marilyn’s new white wool carpet.

More importantly, though, there are significant scientific problems with Shaw’s contrived murder scenario.

According to my research, while killing a person with an enema is possible, doing so is not that simple or easy. It requires an infusion of the descending colon with a large quantity of a lethal solution. It would be virtually impossible to murder a person by simply injecting a lethal solution into his or her rectum.

In Murder Orthodoxies, I wrote extensively about a similar situation, using the rectum as the route to murder Marilyn using a drug infused suppository. Chuck Giancana, Sam Giancana’s stepbrother, stated in his novel, Double Cross, that his stepbrother deployed suppository wielding assassins to murder Marilyn. Since killing with a bulb syringe would be similarly problematic, allow me to touch upon the significant points here. Keep in mind Shaw’s contention that the lethal solution quickly infiltrated Marilyn’s blood system, which led to her death.

The human rectum is primarily a storage chamber, a vertical section of the large intestine approximately 4½ in-ches long; therefore, it provides only about fifty square inches of an absorptive surface. Since the lining of the rectum is smooth, meaning devoid of the finger-like protrusions known as villi, absorption through it is neither efficient nor speedy. The International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences Review and Research, noted that both the degree and the speed of drug absorption from the human rectum is both lower and slower than absorption from the gastrointestinal tract. It is highly unlikely, therefore, that the lethal solution proposed by Shaw quickly infiltrated Marilyn’s blood system. Additionally, blood circulation to and from the rectum is unusual. A list of various points follows.

The inferior mesenteric and the internal iliac arteries supply the rectum with blood.
The superior rectal vein, the middle rectal vein and the inferior rectal vein along with anastomoses or venous plexus return blood from the rectum.
The superior rectal vein connects to the portal system and directly to the liver where the blood undergoes a degree of first pass metabolism.
The inferior and middle rectal veins connect directly to the systemic circulation system which delivers blood to the heart through the inferior vena cava and then throughout the body before reaching the liver.
The anastomoses or venous plexus connect to both the portal and the systemic venous systems.
The anal canal, which measures 1±½ inches in length, is the final part of the human digestive system and the inferior rectal artery delivers blood to the anal canal.
The inferior rectal vein accepts blood from the anal canal and delivers it to the internal iliac vein and then to the systemic circulation.

Many studies have been performed to determine the bioavailability of drugs administered rectally. The percentages vary considerably with time and drug; also, a consensus does not exist regarding just how much of a rectally absorbed drug enters the portal venous system, gets delivered to the liver, where it is subjected to first pass metabolism, and just how much bypasses the liver on its initial trip through the body. Certainly, based on the anatomy of the rectum, which varies from person to person, as does each person’s physiology, the only reasonable position to assume, for the purpose of this discussion, is that 50% of an absorbed drug enters the portal venous system and then the liver, where a portion of it will be metabolized, and 50% of an absorbed drug does not enter the liver on its initial trip through the body. Additionally, assuming that 50% of the absorbed drug passed through Marilyn’s liver initially and 50% did not, I suggest that more of the absorbed drug would have been found in Marilyn’s blood stream than in her liver, just the opposite of what the toxicological tests performed by Dr. Abernathy indicated. And that scientific fact leads me to this.

Shaw noted that the amount of chloral hydrate in Marilyn’s blood was 8.0 percent and the amount of pentobarbital in her liver was 13.0 percent, suggesting that the volume of blood in Marilyn’s body was 8% Chloral hydrate and 13% pentobarbital, which, of course, was not the case at all. What Shaw actually meant was not a raw percentage but milligram percent or mg%, a measure of concentration, the mass of a chemical, given in milligrams, that is present in one-hundred milliliters of a solution, blood for instance. Also, Shaw failed to mention the concentration of pentobarbital in Marilyn’s blood, 4.5 mg%, quite a significant omission and a prime example of cherry picking in order to exclude relevant but unwanted evidence.

Dr. Abernathy’s tests indicated a concentration of pentobarbital in Marilyn’s liver that was three times as high as the concentration in her blood. Explained by a branch of pharmacology called pharmacokinetics, that relationship is consistent with ingesting a large overdose and proves beyond a reasonable doubt and to a mathematical, scientific certainty that Marilyn swallowed the drugs that killed her. The drugs were not injected into Marilyn’s body; she did not receive a hot shot; and she was not murdered with a bulb syringe, regardless of its size.

Finally, while Shaw’s hypothetical murderers murdered the world’s most famous woman on that night of nights, where was Eunice Murray? She did not appear in Shaw’s scenario; but we know she was in the house that night with Marilyn, asleep on a cot in the small bedroom very near Marilyn’s bedroom. Certainly, Mrs. Murray would have heard any noises caused by Marilyn’s struggle with the murderers. Once again, Shaw attempted to diminish his problem with Eunice Murray’s known presence that night. He opined:

Of course, as with any theory like this based on circumstantial evidence after so many years have passed, questions will be raised, with answers unfortunately somewhat speculative in nature (Shaw 612).

Remarkably, Shaw began to questions his own theory, his own explanation for what happened to Marilyn and led to her death. What time did the killers arrive? He questioned. Where was Mrs. Murray when the killers arrived and enacted the gruesome scene in Marilyn’s bedroom? Shaw then speculated that the murder possibly occurred between midnight and 3:00 AM, contradicting his proclamation that the murderers arrived at some point close to midnight (Shaw 612). Then, regarding the bruise on Marilyn’s hip, Shaw admitted that other explanations exist as to how Marilyn could have bruised her left hip (Shaw 612). However, if that bruise was caused as he speculated, by her murderers, then obviously foul play had been involved in Marilyn’s death. He then wondered if Mrs. Murray had knowledge of the attempt on Marilyn’s life (Shaw 615), which he then admitted could not be known? He then speculated that Mrs. Murray became spooked by hearing noise near Marilyn’s bedroom, which caused Murray to wonder if Marilyn was in distress and prompted her to call either Greenson of Engelberg (Shaw 615). Eventually, Shaw’s speculations centered on Dr. Greenson, Dr. Engelberg and Eunice Murray and their possible complicity with Robert Kennedy who orchestrated Marilyn’s death via operatives sent to her home (Shaw 617). Frankly, it became self-evident as I read Shaw’s speculations and strange contradictions, that he likely did not even believe Number 13, which he formulated. So why should I? Besides, I know Shaw’s Number 13 is a fantasy founded on sensationalism. Marilyn was dead before midnight when August the 4th became August the 5th in 1962: evidence not speculation confirms that and confirms that Marilyn certainly was not alive at 3:00 AM on August the 5th. Unlike Mark Shaw, rigor mortis and fixed lividity do not speculate.