Like the shadow of Cal-Neva Resort, the long and sinewy shadow of a thin man falls across the death of Marilyn Monroe, that of Peter Lawford, otherwise known to the former Detective Lynn Franklin as Pete. As I explained in Section 4, The Tarradiddlists, within the subsection dedicated to C. David Heymann, Peter’s parents, Lieutenant General Sir Sydney Lawford, KBE, and May Sommerville Aylen, did not marry until Peter was a year old in 1924, after each had divorced their respective spouses; and also as I noted in that section, by all available accounts, Peter’s childhood was bizarre.

Peter Lawford, known also as The Thin Man for his portrayal of the suave, debonair private eye, Nick Charles, was not overlooked in the preceding text, not completely anyway. Textually, he appears here and there when the situation or the circumstances so dictated that he should or must. I did not forget that Peter was married to Pat Kennedy, sister to John and Robert, or that Marilyn was exceptionally friendly with Pat, or that Marilyn allegedly spent a considerable amount of time in the Lawford’s company. All of that is contained within the preceding text. Even so, I confess that I had, and have, a difficult time accepting much of the testimony that has been placed in the mouth of Peter Lawford. Peter’s only biographer, James Spada, christened Pete the man who kept the secrets, the Kennedy’s secrets that is.

In Section 4, I presented a truncated biography of Peter Lawford and within that limited biography, I quoted both James Spada and Laurence Leamer, primarily because other publications dedicated to Peter’s life, biographies if you will, simply did not and do not exist. Even though Patty Seaton, Peter’s fourth and final wife, left behind a memoir, and his son, Christopher, did as well, I quoted Patty sparingly and Christopher not at all, mainly because they wrote about their lives, not so much about Peter’s life.

Regarding James Spada, evidently as a thirteen-year-old youngster in 1963, he founded the first Marilyn Monroe Memorial Fan Club on Staten Island. In 1982, along with George Zeno, Spada published Marilyn Monroe: Her Life in Pictures. In all, James Spada, a photographer also, was involved in twenty publications, various celebrity biographies and coffee table picture books. Nine years after he published Marilyn’s picture book, he published The Man Who Kept the Secrets, labeled the definitive biography of Peter Lawford, perhaps because that book is the only Peter Lawford biography ever published, at least, that is, the only one I could locate. Although Laurence Leamer dedicated several sentences and opinions to Peter Lawford in The Kennedy Women, and the actor’s relationship with Patricia Kennedy, published in 1994, that book is not a Lawford biography; therefore, I could not actually compare and contrast with the writings of other authors what James Spada wrote about Peter Lawford. It is clear, though, that Peter’s abuse of drugs and his severe alcoholism were accurately portrayed by Spada. Additionally, Peter was definitely an inveterate womanizer who preferred young women.

Still, here is my problem with Spada and his book: he relied heavily on Robert F. Slatzer and Jeanne Laverne Carmen, two discredited sources pertaining to their alleged relationships with Marilyn Monroe. Both were fantasists. I avoided including any quotations from both Slatzer and Carmen since I know they both lied about Marilyn; and since both of them lied about Marilyn, it is entirely possible that they also lied about Peter Lawford.

Within this text, I invoked Peter Lawford’s name nearly two-hundred and fifty times, virtually the same number of times various conspiracists invoked his name. Anthony Summers, for instance, invoked Peter’s name exactly three-hundred times. Summers apparently interviewed Peter but also admitted that the interview was brief and not long before the aging actor’s death on Christmas Eve in 1984, certainly not the most conducive time for an interview with the man who kept the secrets.

In 1983, Anthony Summers met Peter in a stylish Los Angeles restaurant for an interview. The sixty year old movie star’s excessive life had taken a toll on his health, Summers observed. So, if Lawford was already sixty when Summers met him in that au courant restaurant, then the meeting must have taken place at the end of 1983 or after September the 7th, approximately a year before Peter’s transport into eternity. The final few years of Peter Lawford’s life, I must repeat here, were marred by extreme illness and several hospitalizations, including five weeks of treatment at The Betty Ford Clinic. During the two years immediately preceding his final hospitalization at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in mid-December of 1984, the once debonair and handsome English actor suffered with the many afflictions and horrid impacts of alcoholism and drug addiction. By the end of 1983, Peter Lawford was already extremely frail and ill.

When Marilyn’s Irish pathographer tried to broach the subject of her death with the frail old Englishman, Peter began to sob and stab himself in the heart with self-condemnations for not driving to Marilyn’s hacienda on the night of August the 4th, twenty-one winters past. So Summers stated that he permanently dropped the subject. Peter Lawford entered eternity just as Johannes Gutenberg’s fifteenth century printing invention began to force Summers’ words onto paper. Considering Peter Lawford’s guilt because he did not drive the few short miles to Marilyn’s modest home on that night of nights, I cannot accept that he stood silently in Marilyn’s guest house and watched as Ralph Greenson stabbed Marilyn in her heart. Perhaps it was a good thing that Peter Lawford was not exposed to the pathography written by Summers. Likewise, I cannot accept that Peter stood there in Marilyn’s living room on the night of August the 4th in 1962 and passively watched as Robert Kennedy poisoned the actress and then assisted the murderer to avoid punishment for his crime as alleged by Michael Rothmiller.

Summers admitted that Lawford refuted the tales regarding John Kennedy’s affair with Marilyn. The ill and aging English actor termed the allegations thereof nothing but balls; and yet, since Lawford’s repudiation contradicted Summers’ professed belief, that is, the author’s professed belief before he became involved with Netflix, the Irish writer dismissed the English actor’s statements. Normal protocol. Summers also asserted that the facts suggested otherwise. I am not exactly sure which facts Summers meant.

Summers did not offer many direct quotations from Lawford. Instead, he relied on quotations from various witnesses, Deborah Gould, for instance, who was married to Lawford in 1976; but as husband and wife, Peter and Deborah only cohabited for two months. Even so, Deborah reported several tidbits that she claimed Lawford told her about Marilyn’s affairs with the middle Kennedy brothers. Similarly, Summers interviewed Patty Seaton, who married Peter in July of 1984, approximately six months before his relocation into eternity the following December. Summers’ interview with Patricia occurred after her husband’s death; and she testified that Peter told her John Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn. According to Patricia according to Peter, the actress and the president copulated in one the beachside mansion’s onyx bathtubs; but Summers could not offer any direct testimony from Peter Lawford to corroborate the hearsay tales of Deborah Gould or Patricia Seaton. Still, Marilyn’s Irish pathographer dropped many other names of persons who allegedly knew Peter and knew all about Marilyn’s assignations with the middle Kennedy brothers by way of the thin man’s juicy anecdotes, none of which could be corroborated, all of which were hearsay and none of which were ever encumbered by so much as a calendar date.

While Summers quoted The Thin Man sparingly, the serial fabulist and fantasist, C. David Heymann, quoted Peter extensively, some quotations pages in length, all enclosed in quotation marks. As I noted in Section 4: A Serial Fabulist, within the subsection dedicated to Heymann, Patricia Seaton informed David Johnston, a vocal critic of Heymann’s frequent use of fabricated and deceased sources, that Lawford could not have been interviewed by Heymann as the author had alleged. According to her, and I repeat here what I previously noted, Peter was close to death and hardly able to make coherent statements, much less conduct a lengthy interview.1Op. Cit. Johnston

Therein rests a difficult problem and the navel of the issue. Considering that Heymann’s initial book about the Kennedys, A Woman Named Jackie, which featured tales about Marilyn and President Kennedy, published in 1989, appeared five years after Peter Lawford’s death, I must repeat the obvious question: when, then, did Heymann interview the dying actor? Along with Donna Morel, I am convinced, as I have already asserted, that Clem Heymann never interviewed Peter Lawford. According to Patricia Seaton, Heymann invented all the quotations he attributed to her husband; and a considerable amount of what Heymann quoted, what he alleged came from the mind and mouth of Peter, found its way onto the pages of Marilyn pathographies written thereafter; but the quotation most often mentioned in the same breath as the name Peter Lawford became the title of a BBC television documentary, Say Goodbye to the President, broadcast in October of 1985. According to Anthony Summers, Peter said that Marilyn spoke similar words during their telephone conversation the night of August the 4th: Say goodbye to Jack and say good-bye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy. John Kennedy was also called Jack.

Summers admitted that Peter altered more than a few times over the years the words which he placed in Marilyn’s mouth. Many Marilyn historians note that Lawford did not begin using and then inconsistently repeating the famous quotation until the mid-nine­teen-seventies. As a re­sult, those historians doubt the validity of the quotation, citing as partial corroboration the following fact: Marilyn was not a fan of Peter Lawford. Their unique history suggests that Lawford fell romantically for Marilyn at the beginning of her movie career and he pursued her while they were both a part of the local surfing community; but she was simply disinterested. She apparently referred to him as a beach wolf more than once; and as I noted earlier, Marilyn was suspicious of Peter’s wolfesque motives.

However, on October the 16th in 1974 at 5:00 PM, the Los Angeles Police Department interviewed Peter Lawford. During that interview, according to the LAPD, Peter asserted that Marilyn said: Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to Jack and say good-bye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy. The preceding quotation is not exactly the same as the one reported by Summers and other conspiracists; but neither is it radically different. Moreover, during his LAPD interview, as noted on the written account thereof, Mr. Lawford also stated that most of what has been written by various authors, such as Slatzer, Scaduto, Mailer and others regarding the last days in the life of Marilyn Monroe are ‘pure fantasy’. Odd. No conspiracist of which I am aware has ever mentioned or quoted Peter’s interview with the LAPD.

Randy Taraborrelli stated, in his Marilyn literary work, that he interviewed Peter Lawford in 1981, two years before Summers’ interview and before Peter became seriously ill, before most of the fiction about Marilyn and the Kennedys took root. Taraborrelli described Peter as a kindhearted but conflicted man who would never have betrayed a friend. Taraborrelli quoted the loyal and kindhearted Peter: All of this business about Marilyn and JFK and Bobby is pure crap. I think maybe―and I’m saying maybe―she had one or two dates with JFK. Not a single date with Bobby, though, and I swear to Christ that’s the truth (Taraborrelli  486). While writing his book about Frank Sinatra, Taraborrelli interviewed Dean Martin who testified: If you knew Peter like I knew Peter, you would know that he would never have said those things about Marilyn and the Kennedys, especially if those stories were true (Taraborrelli 487). I do not know what secrets Peter revealed to his ex-wives, if any; and I do not know what secrets the actor revealed to his acquaintances and friends, if any; and I do not know what Marilyn said to Peter the night of August the 4th in 1962, or if she said anything at all about John Kennedy; however, the testimony, statements and anecdotes attributed to Peter Lawford, particularly those attributed to him by C. David Heymann, should be dismissed as fabrications.

Allow me to pose questions and raise a possibility. If, at the time of her death, Marilyn was in love with and having an affair with Robert Kennedy, why would she instruct Peter to say good-bye to the president for her? To do that seems implausible and, well, a good-bye misdirected. Certainly she would have instructed Peter to tell her current former lover good-bye, the attorney general, who was staying at Peter’s beachside mansion, some have alleged. Marilyn was putatively devastated over Bobby Kennedy’s rejection. Say good-bye to Bobby. Does the absence of a good-bye to Bobby suggest, or even function as evidence, proof that Marilyn never had an affair with the attorney general?