On the 25th of May in 2017, the website Mysterious Universe published an article written by Nick Redfern under a title that I intentionally parodied and used for the title written above. I referenced Nick’s article and also quoted from it in Murder Orthodoxies within a section dedicated to a curious conspiracy theory relating Marilyn’s death to her putative knowledge of little green men. I have already written several thousand words on the topic of Marilyn, UFOs and little green men; and I see no real point in repeating even a hillock of those words here: if you want to consult Murder Orthodoxies, you can do so by following this direct link: Secret Things From Outer Space. I recommend that you do; but, my primary purpose here is to offer some comments regarding Redfern’s recent publication, Diary of Secrets: UFO Conspiracies and the Death of Marilyn Monroe. Redfern followed an odd path initially excavated by Donald Burleson, PhD. In 2003, PhD Burleson published the results of his excavations: UFOs and the Murder of Marilyn Monroe.
In his 2017 article, Redfern noted that the conspiracy theory involving Marilyn, UFOs and President Kennedy had been founded on the controversial CIA-UFO-Memo; but, as Redfern noted, the memorandum was of dubious origin and of equally dubious authenticity.
In late 2001, Robert Wood, a PhD and renowned UFOlogist, purchased all the documents pertaining to Marilyn and UFOs compiled by the UFOlogist Tim Cooper, a veritable mountain of paper. Following his late 2001 purchase, in early 2002, PhD Wood employed Redfern to review, categorize and also summarize the content of all those documents, which included a copy of the dubious CIA memorandum. Redfern asserted that he carefully studied that specific document. Despite the UFO memorandum’s ambiguous and inexplicit wording, Redfern thought: maybe there is something to the document, after all; and then he changed his mind: […] I think it’s a hoax. Redfern then opined: Maybe, there’s another answer: that we’re seeing a document crafted by disinformation experts to confuse Ufology, and for reasons presently unknown.
Despite Redfern’s somewhat ambivalent evaluation of the memorandum four years ago, as I began to read his new book, it appeared to me and I quickly assumed that he was about to pivot one-hundred and eighty degrees. He was going to conclude, based on some new and conclusive evidence, that the odd memorandum was, in fact, an authentic CIA document; it was real. But then, as I read more and more, it became clear that my original assumption had been incorrect.
It is a circuitous and often confusing story related by Nick Redfern. He drops an inordinate number of unrecognizable names, including the names of several known document forgers who might have potentially created the CIA-UFO-Memo. Possibly even Tim Cooper had crafted the memorandum, Redfern opined, and then dismissed his opinion.
Could Thomas and Salina Cantwheel, a father and daughter duo, have been the talented forgers. Allegedly, both Cantwheels were agents of intelligence and espionage, finally revealed to be shadowy persons using fraudulent names.
Perhaps a fellow named Dr. Epigoni created the document; but Redfern, who learned about the physician from Texas UFOlogist Dan Madeley, never actually met the mysterious doctor. Perhaps he did not even exist.
Then again, the forger could have been George Adamski, a known hoaxer and modifier of FBI files. The FBI file fiddler even claimed that he encountered hippie-like, long-haired aliens who simply wanted Earthlings to eliminate their nuclear bombs and missiles. Adamski even announced that these aliens had been given the equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval by both the FBI and Air Force Intelligence.
Or perhaps the forger was Major Alice Bradey Sheldon, an intelligence officer for both the US Army Air Forces and the CIA. Under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr., Major Sheldon wrote many science fiction stories and two full-length novels. Tragically, in May of 1987, at the age of seventy-one, she killed her blind husband and then herself, apparently fulfilling some sort of strange suicide pact.
It should be noted, many denizens of the UFO community have believed for years that Master Sergeant Richard Doty, a former agent in the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), forged the CIA-UFO-Memo. MSgt Doty even admitted that he, and other AFOSI agents, frequently crafted and distributed forged documents just to perversely cast seeds of doubt and confusion among gullible UFOlogists. A known poor speller, Doty’s accusers have used a misspelled word in the CIA-UFO-Memo, trist, as sufficient evidence to convict the former AFOSI agent. While Redfern mentioned the misspelling of tryst and then immediately dismissed the brouhaha over the word as much ado over nothing, Richard Doty did not make an appearance in Redfern’s book or his top ten accounting of potential forgers.
Redfern identified a woman named Lee Israel as the most likely probable forger. She was an expert forger who generated almost perfect document replications by using stolen official forms as her templates. She frequently sold her almost perfect forgeries for large sums of cash. Eventually the federal authorities arrested, then incarcerated Miss Israel after she admitted her culpability and document forging antics. Her admission ended her career as an expert forger of bogus documents that appeared to be authentic.
Redfern also offered several scenarios that involved forgers in the UFO community, the CIA, the FBI and various branches of the US military. He also opined that concerned whistleblowers just might have crafted and then distributed various forged constructs along with authentic classified documents. Their reason for releasing forgeries intermingled with authentic documents? To insulate the individuals receiving the real documents, protect them from prosecution. The unauthorized removal and possession of classified federal documents is a serious crime punishable by the imposition of a fine, several years in federal prison or both. But, which documents were real? Eventually, Redfern suggested that the scamming and hoaxing could simply be a disinformation and chaos spreading campaign instituted by the tricky and incorrigible Russians in order to combat a similar campaign instituted by the tricky and incorrigible Americans. Honestly, the downright goofiness of it all left me slightly woozy headed; and it should be relatively apparent that the pedigree of the CIA-UFO-Memo is not unlike the pedigree of Marilyn’s Red Book of Secrets, at best, far-fetched and flimsy, which will become even more apparent as this review proceeds.
All the speculations regarding UFOs and potential forgers of the CIA-UFO-Memo, will supply a reader, knowledgeable or otherwise, with interesting entertainment; but Redfern’s book is afflicted with a serious, fundamental flaw. He expressed that flaw in this declaration regarding Marilyn’s diary: That such a diary did exist is not in doubt […] (KE:8). Really? What proof did Redfern provide to substantiate such an untenable declaration? Since Redfern himself neither actually saw nor read Marilyn’s Little Red Diary, a certain impossibility, like many authors before him, bereft of the actual red diary, he offered the statements of others as evidence; and the first person whose statements he offered was a psychologist by the name of Jack V. Hattem. Redfern insinuated that Dr. Hattem not only saw Marilyn’s Little Red Diary, but also read it. The good doctor also spent years investigating Marilyn’s death, according to Redfern, an investigation that ended with a book publication in 2007: Marilyn Monroe: Murder by Consent: A Psychologist’s Journey with Death.
I read Dr. Hattem’s book approximately three years ago; and after I finished reading Redfern’s book, I revisited Hattem’s book. It is as I remembered it being: a brief and unsourced, confusing mishmash of self-aggrandizing memoir and psychobabble that is also filled with opinion and speculation. It is also peppered liberally with unexplained, vague allusions like it was rumored at the time, it has been reported, according to those closest to her, it is quite possible that Marilyn Monroe, etcetera and so forth. After reading Dr. Hattem’s book, I immediately dismissed it, despite his assertion that he became a member of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center immediately after its formation in 1962. He became involved, he alleged, in performing Marilyn’s psychological autopsy (PA), the first performed in Los Angeles County. Although I have not been able to either confirm or confute the good doctor’s assertion regarding his involvement with Marilyn’s PA, I have some reasonable doubts due to several errors in his book.
According to my research, two renowned psychologists, Dr. Norman Farberow and Dr. Edwin Shneidman, along with a renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Litman, founded the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center in 1958. Evidently, by 1962, the three doctors and their staff had already performed several psychological autopsies, a neologism coined by Dr. Shneidman. Additionally, Dr. Hattem proclaimed that Lionel Grandison, who will appear later in this review, was actually a doctor and coroner Curphey’s assistant, when in fact, Grandison was a clerk whose main function with the coroner’s office was to organize papers and locate the deceased’s next of kin.1According to Dr. Curphey’s 1983 Los Angeles Times obituary, he founded the Suicide Prevention Bureau, an assertion repeated by Dr. Curphey’s The New York Times obituary and his Associated Press obituary.
Dr. Hattem made several additional errors within the text of his book. He asserted that Marilyn and Jimmie Dougherty, her first husband, remained married for only two years; and during most of those two years, the couple lived apart. Actually, Marilyn and Dougherty were married for four years, from June of 1942 until September of 1946; and they were separated during their marriage’s final two years because Dougherty joined the Merchant Marines: in the spring of 1944, the Merchant Marines stationed Dougherty in the Pacific and Southeast Asian war zones (Spoto KE:5).
Marilyn was an alcoholic, Dr. Hattem also asserted, a frequently reported falsehood and slander. Donald Spoto noted: As for chemical dependency, Marilyn was never an alcoholic: in fact, she had little tolerance for liquor, which, Spoto asserted, made Marilyn ill (KE: 13). Gary Vitacco-Robles also reported in ICON that Marilyn avoided liquor because it upset her stomach (KE v2:3); and even Eunice Murray reported that Marilyn was not much of a hard liquor drinker, a fact also noted by Jimmie Dougherty. She had a weakness for champagne; and she occasionally overindulged that weakness; but as Spoto accurately noted: A few evenings of overindulgence make for good gossip but not an accurate diagnosis of alcoholism (KE:13).
The psychologist wrote that Marilyn frequently became murderously enraged, and he asserted: With regard to inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger, as previously noted, Marilyn had many extreme out-bursts directed at the studios, at rejecting men, and, while rarely noted, at a father who never acknowledged her (KE:5). The preceding is a particularly egregious mischaracterization, if not an outright prevarication. All of her inner circle testified that Marilyn justifiably became angry with studio executives and her doctors, but not frequently. According to Whitey Snyder, Marilyn never criticized or spoke maliciously about anyone, not even about the individuals who she felt had slighted, abandoned or betrayed her. She responded with tears to those types of humiliations; and according to Jimmie Dougherty, Marilyn attempted to contact her father only twice. Each time he rejected her; but she did not become murderously enraged: she wept.
Similarly, and apparently a corollary of her murderous outrage, Dr. Hattem alleged that Marilyn threatened persons that she perceived to be her enemies with dire consequences throughout her life, but nothing ever became of it beyond walking away from a film (KE:18). Certainly, the preceding allegation is beyond ludicrous. Marilyn never just walked away from a film; and not even once, within the text of the authentic biographies that I have read regarding Marilyn’s life, did an author report that she threatened any person with dire consequences. Furthermore, Dr. Hattem did not specify what type of dire consequences she threatened or who she threatened; and not one of those biographies and not one of the one-hundred and twenty plus books that I have read about Marilyn, excluding the book that I am at this moment reviewing, mentioned Dr. Jack V. Hattem; and Gary Vitacco-Robles, himself a psychotherapist, informed me that he had neither heard of nor encountered the psychologist’s name.
And finally, the good doctor referenced some mysterious, unspecified accusations that Marilyn allegedly leveled at the middle Kennedy brothers following the Cuban Missile Crisis (KE:19), most certainly a complete impossibility: that international crisis occurred between October the 16th and November 20th in 1962, more than three months after Marilyn’s death.
Frankly, based on the vague content of the good doctor’s publication, along with his errors and the absence of his name from the Marilyn cañon, I sincerely doubt that he thoroughly investigated Marilyn’s life or that he was involved with developing her psychological autopsy.
However, contrary to Redfern’s assertion, the psychologist did not claim anywhere in his book that he either saw or read Marilyn’s Little Red Diary. The good doctor only noted that the diary was stolen from [Marilyn’s] deathbed and disappeared for five years (KE:1), a completely incorrect statement. He later contradicted the preceding statement by noting that Marilyn’s diary disappeared on the night of her death, then resurfaced in 1978 in the Police Organized Crime Intelligence Division (KE:18). While not a mathematical wizard, I am certain that 1978 is sixteen years beyond 1962, not five. Dr. Hattem then noted that the red dairy had been the topic of many reports, with others claiming they have read it (KE:18). The psychologist did not divulge who those others might have been.
To close this discussion of Dr. Hattem and his book, he relied on and supported the coerced suicide scenario presented in an FBI memorandum that I labeled The Kennedy Affair Document, a copy of which the doctor included at the end of his publication, absent a scholarly evaluation. The psychologist concluded, based on that odd document, that Marilyn was a willing participant in her murder because she willingly submitted to the suicide plot of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Ralph Greenson, both of whom wanted Marilyn dead. The doctor proclaimed that Marilyn’s bad choices created a chaotic life and the chaos led to her death, with considerable active participation by herself as co-conspirator (KE:1), quite possibly one of the most outrageous assertions that I have ever encountered regarding Marilyn’s unfortunate and sad suicide; and I would be remiss if I did not note that Dr. Hattem incanted the names of two conspiracists, Donald Wolfe and Anthony Summers. They had proved that Marilyn’s diary actually existed, according to Dr. Hattem; but those two conspiracists relied inordinately on the testimony and writings of the omnipresent fantasist, Robert F. Slatzer, the next name that Redfern evoked.
One of Marilyn’s closest friends was a man named Robert Slatzer, Redfern declared. He, too, knew of Marilyn’s secret journal (KE:8). Slatzer also confirmed, reported Redfern, like Dr. Hattem had confirmed, that the diary contained a considerable amount of information pertaining to Robert Kennedy. For true, we have now entered the world of lofty ironic comedy, lofty ironic comedy worthy of William Shakespeare, ironic comedy so lofty, in fact, that my nose began to bleed. Here’s why.
Immediately following Marilyn’s death, her Little Red Diary did not even exist. The red book would not exist for a decade plus two years. Why so? Because Robert Slatzer had yet to create the stage prop for his fantasy stage play involving an alleged sixteen year affair and brief weekend marriage to America’s most famous blonde. Within the text of Frank Capell’s 1964 anti-RFK diatribe, The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe, the RFK-hater did not mention a dairy in which Marilyn transcribed the middle Kennedy brother’s nasty secrets. Nine years later, Norman Mailer did not mention a red diary in his novel biographical novel about the blonde actress and her associations with the middle Kennedy brothers. Marilyn’s Red Book of Secrets would not appear in her glamorous realm until 1974; the red diary appeared with the appearance of Robert Slatzer’s book, The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe. Once again, within the text of Murder Orthodoxies, I devoted many thousands of words to that incorrigible and audacious liar, much too much information to repeat here. The story of Slatzer’s Marilyn artifice is complex and also involves the journalist Will Fowler and none other than the radical anti-Kennedyite, Frank Capell. Suffice it to say, Slatzer’s marriage yarn was a total fabrication. I hope you will follow the link and read the complete story of Marilyn’s Alleged Second Husband.
Exactly sixty-two words separated the name of Robert Slatzer and the name of the next person Redfern invoked as proof that the red diary actually existed, Lionel Grandison, Sr. In 1962, as noted earlier, the LA County Coroner’s Office employed Grandison as a clerk; he claimed that he not only saw the red diary but read it and took extensive notes, copied excerpts from it. In 2012, Grandison, Sr., using his Muslim moniker, Samir Muqaddin, along with his son, Grandison, Jr., released a memoir of sorts, actually a flimsy repudiation of the official coroner’s declaration that Marilyn’s death was a probable suicide.
In his memoir, Grandison asserted that Robert “Iron Bob” Maheu, James “Big Jim” O’Connell and E. Howard “Eduardo” Hunt recruited Marilyn into both the CIA and the FBI. She joined those organizations and became a spy. J. Edgar Hoover immediately dispatched Marilyn to determine if, in fact, Arthur Miller was a Communist. Maheu instructed Marilyn to get close to Miller. She did. So close that she married him, her third husband. According to Grandison, Sr., Marilyn divorced her third husband so she could enter the final phase of her life, a phase of continual association with President Kennedy. While acting as a government spy, she and the president attended high level intelligence meetings that included the attendance of many curious characters, foreign and American politicians, intelligence agents and, of course, gangsters involved in organized crime; but, in the end, Marilyn’s mental instability made her a security risk. The Kennedys had no choice but to have her silenced. For all of that, Lionel “Samir Muqaddin” Grandison, Sr. did not offer one single shred of concrete or verifiable evidence. Not one. He simply asserted that Marilyn’s declassified FBI files proved that she was an intelligence agent. If those files proved anything they proved just the opposite: Marilyn was never a government agent.
Again, within the text of Murder Orthodoxies, I devoted more than a few words to the mythology of Marilyn’s Little Red Diary, Samir Muqaddin and his goofy memoir; you can follow this direct link to Marilyn’s Red Book of Secrets through which you can link to A Coroner Clerk’s Diary Account.
The lofty ironic comedy to which I previously alluded is this: Redfern relied on the Father of the Red Diary Mythology, relied on the liar who created the stage prop to verify that it actually existed. Samir Muqaddin also relied on Slatzer. The former coroner’s clerk admitted as much during the LADA’s 1982 threshold re-investigation into Marilyn’s death; and Jack Hattem relied on Wolfe and Summers: those two conspiracist authors also relied considerably on Slatzer’s diary yarn.
Both Slatzer and Muqaddin offered contradictory testimony regarding how they encountered Marilyn’s Red Book of Secrets. In his 1974 publication, Robert Slatzer alleged that Marilyn produced the red diary from the bottom of her purse while seated on a blanket during their visit to Point Dume in 1962. And yet, he testified to Anthony Summers that a weeping Marilyn produced the red diary from an oversized shopping bag along with a rubber- band-bound wad of love notes from Robert Kennedy (Summers 420-421). The weeping Marilyn and those RFK-penned love notes, penned on Justice Department stationary, by the way, did not appear in Slatzer’s initial account of how he met Marilyn’s red diary; and how did Marilyn’s purse transfigure itself into a large shopping bag?
Likewise, in 1992, the senior Grandison testified that he dispatched two drivers from the coroner’s office to 12305 Fifth Helena Drive with hopes that they could locate something that would identify Marilyn’s next-of-kin: the drivers returned with the infamous little red book. And yet, in his memoir, Grandison Sr. asserted that he accidentally discovered the red diary in a purse recovered from Marilyn’s residence. Both stories, like the stories told by Slatzer, cannot be factual.
Jeanne Carmen, another chronic fabulist like Robert Slatzer, claimed that she saw and read Marilyn’s diary on several occasions. Still, she told several contradictory stories about the when where and how of Marilyn’s red book. Likewise, the actor Ted Jordan claimed that Marilyn gave him the red diary on August the 1st in 1962 while standing on his front porch while taking swigs from a jug of champagne. Jordan told more than a few contradictory stories about the red book before conceding that it never existed, perhaps the only truthful statement Ted Jordan ever made about Marilyn Monroe.
Suffice it to say, an overabundance of contradictory and mutually exclusive tales have been told by those who claimed they saw and also read Marilyn’s Little Red diary, including Eunice Murray’s son-in-law, Norman Jefferies, and a former LAPD COP, Michael Rothmiller.2In 1998, according to Donald Wolfe’s source notes, he interviewed Michael Rothmiller, a name also evoked by Nick Redfern. Rothmiller, a former Los Angeles police officer, testified that he saw and read Marilyn’s diary in 1978 when he worked in the secret file room of the Organized Crime Intelligence Division, the infamous Gangster Squad. Wolfe promptly added Rothmiller’s name to the list of persons who confirmed that the red diary once existed. You can read my review of Michael Rothmiller’s publication, Bombshell, by following this link: <https://marilynfromthe22ndrow.com/wp/bombshell-the-night-rfk-killed-marilyn/>
So, the contradictory tarradiddles about Marilyn’s secret diary notwithstanding, ultimately, where did Nick Redfern finally land regarding that damned CIA-UFO-Memo? Maybe it’s genuine, the UFOlogist opined before perversely adding: Perhaps it isn’t. I found myself perplexed and wondering: what, in actuality, was Nick Redfern’s point? Why did he write his one-hundred and fifty-nine page epistle? And then he ended it by posing a question: was Marilyn Monroe killed because of aliens? I must note, a significant note, that the preceding question should be read: was Marilyn Monroe murdered because of aliens. In all the books that have been written by the conspiracist writers regarding Marilyn’s death, the word killed is code for and interchangeable with the word murder.
The answer to Nick Redfern’s question is a resounding no; and Marilyn’s Red Book of Secrets never existed. Even Marilyn denied during an interview that she kept a diary, the stage prop from which its creator, Slatzer, and other authors, offered several direct quotations. In 2010, the publication of a book, entitled Fragments, gave the world a glimpse of Marilyn’s actual writings along with a glimpse into her mind. A thoughtful comparison of Marilyn’s actual writings with what has been alleged to be Marilyn’s will reveal distinct differences between the alleged and what we now know to be real. But what does that matter in the world of biographical conjecturing and fiction? Besides, the requisite stage props must be maintained in order to generate the environs from which the crud about Marilyn Monroe and Robert Kennedy can continue to be excreted; and one of the most important stage props is the MacGuffin known as Marilyn’s Red Book of Secrets, certainly an utter myth.
Before I finally end this commentary, I would be remiss if I did not mention several questionable and incorrect assertions tendered by Redfern pertaining to Marilyn Monroe.
On page nine, Redfern quoted and agreed with a statement that Dr. Howard Markel made for the PBS News Hour. On her final day alive, reported Dr. Markel, Marilyn lolled about her home in a drug and alcohol-fueled haze, a completely false statement. According to her autopsy, Marilyn did not consume any alcohol during that day. Also, the word loll implies indolence or laziness; but in fact, Marilyn worked in her planting beds, engaged in a slightly terse conversation with Lawrence Schiller, engaged in two sessions with Dr. Greenson and according to at least one report from William Asher, she took a walk on the beach and observed a volley ball game near Peter Lawford’s beach side mansion. Marilyn also engaged in several telephone conversations, including one with Joe DiMaggio, Jr., who testified that Marilyn did not sound drugged or drunk when they spoke at approximately 7:20 PM. Not one person present that day, and not one person she talked to before retiring to her bedroom, asserted that Marilyn acted or sounded drugged or drunk.
On page 10, Redfern reiterated his false statement about Marilyn’s drunken condition: We’ve seen how those two, powerful ingredients―pills and booze―almost certainly claimed Marilyn’s life […].
On page 11, Redfern asserted that Marilyn had a trained nurse, Eunice Murray, another completely false and often floated assertion. Mrs. Murray never graduated from high school. Philip Laclair, one of Eunice Murray’s son-in-laws, reported to Donald Spoto that Eunice had no formal training as a nurse (Spoto KE:19). In fact, Eunice’s formal education ended in 1918 when she was sixteen years old.
On page 41, Redfern asserted that Marilyn’s diary would not have existed but for Monroe’s second husband. According to Redfern, Joe DiMaggio, one of the most famous figures in the sport of baseball, felt that Marilyn should record her historic encounters with all of her high-powered Hollywood pals. Of course, DiMaggio never intended for Marilyn to include her associations with the murderous middle Kennedy brothers. Redfern’s proclamation that DiMaggio suggested keeping a diary to Marilyn, I must admit, left me scratching my head. Why would one of the most private and taciturn men who ever lived pressure Marilyn to abandon writing her incomplete memoir only to suggest that she become a Hollywood diarist. DiMaggio despised Hollywood and virtually everyone in the motion picture industry: he wanted Marilyn to forsake them and Hollywood, forsake her career. Why would he recommend memorializing anything at all about a world that he could barely tolerate?
I would be remiss, and disingenuous, if I failed to report the following. Starting in either 1980 or 1981, depending on account, due to a recommendation by his accountant, DiMaggio maintained a record of his daily activities and expenses until 1994. He meticulously recorded his expenditures for taxicabs, meals, tips, entertainment, socks and shoes, shirts and britches. In DiMaggio’s opinion, everything was too expensive. The former center fielder complained an inordinate amount and disliked practically everything, primarily his fame: he hated being famous. In one entry, he complained about some book people who had pestered him so much about an interview for his pending biography, that he finally agreed to sit for one; but he noted emphatically that he would not reveal anything in a negative way towards Marilyn. In 2007, Steiner Sports Marketing acquired the journals and announced their auction. The sports memorabilia company hoped the journals would sell for at least $1.5M. Reviewers complained, however, that the journals were dreary and tiresome; and virtually all of DiMaggio’s entries involved his expenditures or things that he hated, like sandals and Paul Simon and persons who called him Joltin Joe DiMaggio. The complainers invariably noted that the journals contained absolutely nothing about the New York Yankees and absolutely nothing at all about Marilyn Monroe. Imagine that!
Regarding Redfern’s declaration, that DiMaggio encouraged Marilyn to keep a diary, the author did not provide a legitimate source on which he based his odd declaration; and therefore, I declare this: Joe DiMaggio never suggested that Marilyn maintain a diary.3I must comment: to Nick Redfern’s everlasting credit, he did not assert that Robert Slatzer was Marilyn’s second husband, as many other authors have asserted.
On page 54, Redfern stated: FBI records say that in the months leading up to her death, Marilyn was being “actively used by the Communist Party.” The preceding is a false statement and appears to be an intentional mischaracterization. An FBI file from Mexico City, dated the 13th of July in 1962, contained the following declaration: Subject’s views [Marilyn’s views] are very positively and concisely leftist; however, if she is being actively used by the Communist Party, it is not general knowledge among those working with the movement in Los Angeles. That memorandum’s internal FBI file number has become virtually illegible but appears to be 105-40698-3; but I could be incorrect. At any rate, Redfern did not include a copy of the FBI records that he referenced. On a related note, several memoranda that I obtained from the Department of Justice clearly indicated that the American Communist Group in Mexico (ACGM) was a loose association of former Communist Party Members, primarily social in nature, who shared sympathies for the Soviet Union. Those files also noted that the ACGM lacked formal organization, was not actively engaging in politics and was not actively distributing propaganda. Evidently, the group’s members did not want to jeopardize their status in Mexico, particularly in Mexico City.
Finally on page 13, Redfern explained that Marilyn kept in her diary the nation’s most deeply hidden secrets, the nation’s crown jewels, and by doing that, Marilyn placed herself in a perilous situation. Once the middle Kennedy brothers learned that Marilyn was scrupulously writing down everything they had told her, those brothers began to shudder. The entire Aladdin’s Cave of hidden secrets―maybe even the presidency―was now in danger of being compromised, opined Redfern. All because two brothers were on the prowl for a bit of hot pussy. Famous pussy, and famous brothers, admittedly (KE:2).
To begin with, there is no evidence whatsoever that John and/or Robert Kennedy ever shared one secret of any kind with Marilyn Monroe.
Next, there is no credible, conclusive or verifiable evidence whatsoever that Marilyn engaged in a lengthy affair with John Kennedy. She had one brief sexual encounter with the president at Bing Crosby’s desert estate. She confided in Ralph Roberts that the desert episode was the extent of her affair with JFK; and the encounter was not a big deal for either her or the president. Also, Marilyn told Susan Strasberg that a long term relationship with a man like John Kennedy was not the least bit desirable.
Next, both Marilyn and Robert Kennedy denied that they were engaged in an affair when the rumors that they were began to surface. She informed Sidney Skolsky that the rumors were, in fact, lies. Marilyn confided in both Sidney Skolsky and Susan Strasberg that she did not even find Robert Kennedy physically attractive. She preferred tall and thin, slightly regal, older men who wore eye glasses. Even J. Randy Taraborrelli correctly dismissed the tales of an affair between Marilyn and RFK as primarily a creation of J. Edgar Hoover. In fact, that alleged affair was the creation of the FBI asset, Frank Capell.
But to end this, for Nick Redfern to reduce one of the most enduring female Icons of all time to the pinpoint of only one feminine aspect was, and is, crude rude and unattractive. Marilyn Monroe was much more than that, much much more; and if Nick Redfern knew anything at all about her, he would not willfully spread the lies perpetrated by one of the worst liars in the history of liars; he would not willfully spread the unfounded mythology of a never produced Little Red Diary created by that liar. Furthermore, if Redfern knew anything at all about Marilyn, he would not have engaged in such a crude and offensive sexual reduction of the world’s most famous woman, a reduction that revealed a lack of empathy and respect for the One and Only, Marilyn. You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Redfern. Ashamed.