Timeline: Events Leading to Marilyn's Alleged Murder

James Hall’s original testimony regarding the time at which he and his partner, Murray Liebowitz,  responded to Marilyn’s hacienda, sometime between the hours of 4:00 and 6:00 AM on August the 5th, created a real problem for conspiracists writers and other individuals who simply wanted, and apparently still want, to believe the ambulance attendant’s narrative: indisputably, by 4:00 AM on the 5th, Marilyn was already dead.

As a part of their orthodoxy, Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin provided the reading public with a remarkable ac-counting of events in real time, an accounting based on opinion and various testimony, not based on any of the previously mentioned secret tapes, and a timeline that the two writers honestly conceded was an approximation. Any conspiracist generated timeline had to allow for three important events to occur at relatively specific times in order to confirm historically accepted testimony. The timeline had to allow for:

1.  The arrival of the Schaefer ambulance no later than 11:00 PM, which would confirm the testimony of Arthur Jacob’s then fiancé, Natalie Trundy, and also correct the ambulance arrival problem created by James Hall’s original 1982 statement to Assistant District Attorney Ronald Carroll;

2.   The presence of Dr. Ralph Greenson and Dr. Hyman Engelberg in Marilyn’s hacienda at approximately 12:00 AM, which would confirm Sgt Jack Clemmons’ attestation regarding the testimony Mrs. Murray allegedly offered that Sunday morning; and

3.  The August the 5th 12:10 AM traffic stop that involved Peter Lawford, Dr. Greenson and Robert Kennedy, which would confirm the testimony of former Beverly Hills Detective, Officer Lynn Franklin.

Of course, Dr. Greenson had to get back to Fifth Helena by 4:35 AM for the arrival of Sgt Jack Clemmons; but allowing for that important event in any created timeline would not have presented much of a problem.

At this point, suffer me to provide a condensed version of the timeline generated by Margolis and Buskin; and for the sake of brevity, I will begin my recitation of their timeline with Robert Kennedy’s second alleged visit to Fifth Helena on August the 4th. Therefore, at approximately:

9:30 PM:
Unannounced and accompanied by the two previously named Gangster Squaders, Robert Kennedy barged into Marilyn’s hacienda where he encountered Eunice Murray and Norman Jefferies watching TV. The attorney general ordered them to vacate the premises.

9:35 PM:
Mrs. Murray and her son-in-law departed and relocated to the home of Marilyn’s next door neighbor.

9:50 PM:
While talking on the telephone in her bedroom, Marilyn heard a disturbance coming from the guest cottage. She went to investigate and found the three intruders attempting to force their way into her filing cabinets. Marilyn began to shout, loudly ordered them to leave. Case and Ahern threw Marilyn onto the guest cottage bed and Robert Kennedy covered her face with a pillow to muffle her screams. On orders from Robert Kennedy, like they had done earlier, Case and Ahern injected Marilyn again, behind her knees and in the jugular vein. Still wrestling with her assailants, Case and Ahern located an enema bag from the nearby bathroom and while pinning Marilyn to the bed. They striped her clothes and forcibly administered an enema filled with broken down pills containing anywhere from thirteen to nineteen Nembutals and seventeen chloral hydrates, which finally tranquilized her.

10:00 PM:
Robert Kennedy and his LAPD OCID pals began a frantic search for Marilyn’s Little Red Diary. Even though she was heavily sedated, Marilyn used the telephone in the guest cottage to call Ralph Roberts, who was out for the evening. Then, Marilyn finally lapsed into unconsciousness.

10:30 PM:
Marilyn’s assailants departed. Mrs. Murray and Jefferies heard the barking of Marilyn’s dog, which incited their curiosity; so they left the house of Marilyn’s neighbor and returned to Fifth Helena.

Over the following fifteen to twenty minutes, a considerable amount of incredible activity transpired, beginning when Mrs. Murray and Jefferies entered the guest cottage.

10:35 PM:
They discovered Marilyn unconscious lying on the guest cottage bed with the telephone in her hand. She appeared to be dead. The following occurred:

1.   After taking the telephone from Marilyn’s hand, Mrs. Murray telephoned for an ambulance;

2.   Then, Mrs. Murray telephoned Dr. Greenson;

3.   Dr. Greenson told Mrs. Murray to call Dr. Engelberg;

4.   Dr. Greenson and Dr. Engelberg arrived together;

5.   Shortly after the doctors arrived, Peter Lawford and Pat Newcomb arrived in Peter’s car;

6.   Pat Newcomb entered the guest cottage and began to behave hysterically, began to shout and scream at Mrs. Murray;

7.   Norman Jefferies escorted Mrs. Murray away from the guest cottage and into the main house where they patiently waited until Marilyn had been pronounced dead;

8.   In Marilyn’s bedroom, Mrs. Murray located Marilyn’s diary, took possession of the red book, along with one of Marilyn’s address books, and placed those objects in her purse;

9.   Pat Newcomb telephoned Arthur Jacobs who was at the Hollywood Bowl with Natalie Trundy;

10. Private detective Fred Otash, the infamous telephone tapper and bedroom bugger, arrived along with his mysterious Soundman, who began to dismantle all of Otash’s eavesdropping equipment;

11. Marilyn’s body finally expelled the enema liquid, along with fecal matter, I assume, due to the enema administered one hour earlier;

12. Otash quickly cleaned and dried an unconscious Marilyn’s nude body;

13. Lawford helped Otash lift an unconscious but still alive and now carefully cleaned Marilyn from the bed, rapidly removed the soiled sheets from the mattress and replaced them with fresh ones and then instructed Mrs. Murray on what to do with the soiled sheets after the ambulance departed;

14. Lawford and Otash dutifully placed Marilyn back on the bed, face-up;

15. Lawford and Otash hurried into Marilyn’s bedroom, collected all the pill bottles, hurried back to the guest cottage and arranged the vials neatly on the bedside table;

16. Actor and private-eye quickly returned to the main house.

11:00 PM:
The ambulance arrived, after which:

17. Pat Newcomb, still behaving hysterically, directed Hall and Liebowitz to the guest cottage where they approached the labored breathing, discolored Marilyn, dragged her off the bed onto the floor and into a hallway onto a hard surface;

18. Arthur Jacobs arrived but did not enter the guest cottage;

19. On Hall’s order, Liebowitz retrieved the resuscitator from the ambulance;

20. Hall inserted a plastic airway into Marilyn’s throat, connected her to and activated the breathing machine, which caused Marilyn’s color to improve;

21. Hall sent Liebowitz to retrieve the gurney from the ambulance in preparation for transporting Marilyn to a hospital;

22. Peter Lawford telephoned Joe Naar, asked him to check on Marilyn and then two minutes later telephoned Naar again, only to cancel the request;

23. Dr. Greenson suddenly appeared and ordered Hall to remove the resuscitator;

24. Hall complied, after which he and Dr. Greenson attempted artificial respiration on Marilyn but Dr. Greenson was an amateur and botched their effort;

25. Dr. Greenson then removed a syringe from a medical bag, needle already attached, and loaded it with a brownish fluid;

26. After counting Marilyn’s ribs to determine where to inject her, Dr. Greenson injected his most famous patient directly into her heart.

11:45 PM:
Marilyn died mere minutes following Dr. Greenson’s injection, after which:

27. Peter Lawford and Sgt Marvin Iannone entered the guest cottage;

28. Dr. Greenson pronounced Marilyn dead and dismissed the ambulance attendants;

29. Sometime after their dismissal, Hall and Liebowitz left Fifth Helena.

30. Unnamed individuals at the scene moved Marilyn’s body into her bedroom, placed her face down across her bed, transferred the prescription vials from the guest cottage to the bedroom and then arranged the bedroom scene to appear as if Marilyn had committed suicide.

Needless to say, the preceding account of events, and associated timeline, is quite remarkable; and in my opinion, essentially not plausible, not credible, not believable; but, at least, the timeline accomplished several important conspiratorial pretensions by placing the ambulance at Marilyn’s hacienda at 11:00 PM, obviously a more conspiratorially palatable time than 4:00 AM, and by placing Dr. Greenson in Marilyn’s hacienda at 12:00 AM; and, too, the author’s theoretical and conjectural timeline appeared to allow for the 12:10 AM August the 5th traffic stop by Officer Lynn Franklin, an event to which I will return later.

Margolis and Buskin did not stipulate the exact time that attendants James Hall and Murray Liebowitz departed in their Schaefer ambulance; but they must have departed immediately prior to 12:00 AM when August the 4th became August the 5th, four hours and thirty-five minutes before Sgt Jack Clemmons arrived.

And speaking of departures, Margolis and Buskin mentioned a few individuals by name as they recounted the events, along with the arrivals and departures that occurred on August the 4th. Then those individuals mysteriously vanished. What happened to Dr. Hyman Engelberg? What did he do as all the frantic and grotesque activity erupted in the guest cottage and Marilyn’s bedroom? After arriving with Dr. Greenson at approximately 10:40 PM, the doctor disappeared from the Margolis and Buskin timeline; and he did not return thereto until 4:45 AM when Sgt Clemmons arrived. Where was the internist during the murderous activity, enjoying an evening dip in Marilyn’s backyard pool?

What happened to Arthur Jacobs? He arrived; but then he was neither mentioned nor seen again. What happen-ed to Fred Otash and his murky, shadowy unnamed Soundman? After the private detective completed the gruesome tasks of handling and cleaning Marilyn’s body in the guest cottage and he entered the main house, did he join his Soundman, who was still dismantling bedroom bugging devices and equipment. We can only assume how those men occupied themselves prior to Marilyn’s murder since Margolis and Buskin did not reveal any of the other activities in which those two men participated or engaged. Certainly they must have departed the scene at some point―but when? The authors left those particular and several other plot threads dangling.

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