Ralph Greenson may have been obsessed with Marilyn; and he may have been under the influence of a serious episode of countertransference and even an egocentric eroticism; and he may have employed unprofessional and unusual treatment strategies with Marilyn; but even so, none of the preceding transform the psychiatrist into a murderer or can be used as evidential proof of murder. The fundamental and essential question is this: why, as alleged by several conspiracists, would Dr. Greenson have murdered his most important and famous client? Well, allegedly, the doctor had three distinct but related motives for stabbing Marilyn in her heart with a twelve inch long cardiac needle in direct view of several observers, one of which, according to at least one conspiracist, was the Attorney General of the United States.

Firstly, doctor Romi was at his wits end with Marilyn Monroe. None of his efforts or treatment strategies had shown any signs of success; and he was downright weary of her intrusion into his life, weary of the demands she placed on him. He wanted to free himself of her toxic influence.

Secondly, not only was Marilyn having an affair with Robert Kennedy, who was actually doctor Ro­mi’s pal, she was also having an affair with her aging psychiatrist. The Attorney General of the United States convinced Dr. Green-son that the therapist’s career was in dire jeopardy because Marilyn was going to expose them both to the public and, in the good doctor’s case, to the medical authorities. Ruin and imprisonment awaited.

And thirdly, Marilyn had grown to resent Dr. Greenson, his intrusion into her personal and professional lives; and she finally realized that he could not provide any answers to the riddle of her powerfully desperate thoughts and feelings. She intended to sever her relationship with him thereby creating a situation the obsessed lover Green-son could not tolerate. Some biographers have asserted, Donald Spoto for instance, that Marilyn not only terminated her relationship with Eunice Murray but also her relationship with Dr. Ralph Greenson on August the 4th.

So, Greenson wanted to rid himself of a troublesome patient with whom he was sexually involved, a troublesome and intractable patient who threatened to reveal their affair, even going as far as announcing that she planned to convene a press conference; but then, Marilyn’s murder was also motivated by Dr. Greenson’s obsessive possessive love. When faced with the real prospect of losing Marilyn, his decision became an obvious one: if he could not possess her then nobody could, that age old and slightly threadbare but nonetheless warped motive of misguided love gone awry.

Do the preceding motives have any validity at all? What about evidence? Did or does evidence exist that could prove those allegations, verify those motives? The conspiracists have offered as evidence and proof what fol-lows hereafter.

Margolis and Buskin essentially repeated the alleged testimony of Peter Lawford as reported in the series of literary efforts produced by the fabulist C. David Heymann, whose literary proclivities I presented and discussed in an earlier section. With Lawford’s death on Christmas Eve in 1984, Peter became a favorite source for conspiracists, especially Clem Heymann, who alleged that Lawford obtained copies of various secret recordings: those in the possession of Fred Otash and Jimmy Hoffa; those in the possession of Dr. Greenson, the free-association tapes that Marilyn putatively recorded for her psychiatrist and eventually transcribed by John Miner; and various tapes in the possession of various groups, nefarious persons who had allegedly tape recorded Marilyn during the last year of her life, tapes whose existence has never been legitimately verified. I also discussed those tapes in an earlier section. It was on one of those many mysterious tapes that Lawford allegedly heard the grunting sounds of Dr. Greenson and Marilyn Monroe’s shrieks of orgasmic delight, proving unquestionably that they were sexually involved. Putatively, the free association tapes that Marilyn made for Dr. Greenson, according to Clem Heymann according to Peter Lawford, also contained Marilyn’s direct admission: she and Greenson were sexually involved. Again, according to Miner, Dr. Greenson destroyed those tapes prior to his death in 1979; and therefore, the only persons who could have actually listened to those dubious recordings were Dr. Greenson himself, Marilyn Monroe, of course, and John Miner.

Additionally, the authors referenced one of the many articles Greenson wrote about his practice in which he often featured his therapeutic efforts with a nameless patient. The referenced article featured the travails of a troublesome female who Greenson feared had actually pursued therapy in hopes of a happy sexual ending. She tried to seduce the good doctor, he asserted; but he repelled her advances, which gave rise to his patient’s silent fury and recalcitrance: she stormed angrily out of his office. According to Greenson’s article, his female patient was hysterical, depressive and impulsive; she was promiscuous but sexually frigid; she was married to a rigid and austere man from academia who obviously did not fulfill her emotional or sexual needs; she could not function in her job even though she was intelligent; and she hated her mother.

Margolis and Buskin naturally made the quantum leap to Marilyn Monroe, noting as they leapt that the characteristics described by Greenson perfectly fit his most famous patient; but then I suspect, following Marilyn’s death, just about everything Greenson wrote was associated in one way or another, rightfully or wrongfully, in the view of most persons, with Dr. Greenson’s most famous, and perceived to be, most tragic patient. But do the preceding characteristics as described actually fit Marilyn Monroe?

I suppose in the broadest sense, the patient Greenson described could be seen as a distant relative of the depressive and somewhat impulsive Marilyn. But hysterical? And sexually frigid? I suppose Arthur Miller could be loosely termed an academic in so far as he was an intellectual; but he was not a member of academia per se. He considered himself to be an artist, a playwright and a screenwriter; and while Marilyn certainly did not have a normal relationship with her mother, she did not act in a way that remotely suggested a hatred for Gladys Pearl. But sexually frigid? That descriptive certainly seems to contradict the sexual addiction and hypersexuality, colloquially termed nymphomania, authors Margolis and Buskin, along with several others, would attribute to Marilyn near the end of her life; but then, Margolis and Buskin made yet another quantum leap. Marilyn was just a naturally sexual creature, they noted and obtained confirmation thereof from Ralph Greenson’s daughter, Joan.

Everything Marilyn did, Joan observed, the way she walked, the way she sat, the way she crossed her legs, the way she talked, everything about Marilyn radiated sex, a remarkable phenomenon observed many years earlier by her acting teacher, Michael Chekhov.

In My Story, Marilyn recounted an acting session with her renown teacher, during which he came to recognize Marilyn’s major difficulty. I understand your problem with your studio now, Marilyn, Chekhov said after the scene. During her performance, his student had innocently and unintentionally transmitted the sex vibrations of a woman in the grip of passion. Chekhov then advised Marilyn that her studio bosses are only interested in your sex vibrations. They care nothing about you as an actress. You can make them a fortune by merely vibrating in front of the camera. Her value to her studio, Michael Chekhov opined and advised, was merely as a sex stimulant (Monroe 173), obviously confirming Joan’s observation about Marilyn’s pronounced sexuality.

Joan Greenson also observed that her father’s client could, at times, be quite a naughty exhibitionist: she never wore undergarments, for instance. Besides, after Marilyn’s death, apparently Dr. Greenson confided in a young student and advised him that female patients more often than not will develop an acute sexual transference and use their therapy as a search for love and seek sexual gratification from the therapist; therefore, a psychiatrist, particularly a young one, must always restrain his natural impulses and urges, especially with beautiful and seductive and sexually driven women. Obviously, then, Marilyn, the incredibly alluring and incredibly sexual creature, her frigidity notwithstanding, seduced Dr. Greenson, who was powerless to resist the siren’s advances, lured him into an affair, which she then threatened to expose to the public. We must assume, then, even though Greenson claimed that he repelled his patient’s sexual advances, that he was not being honest.

Finally, Margolis and Buskin repeated Clem Heymann’s account of the infamous kitchen argument between Robert Kennedy and Marilyn, including her attempt to stab the attorney general with a kitchen knife. Margolis and Buskin’s case closing account was published in 2014, the same year Simon and Schuster posthumously published Heymann’s literary effort about  Joe and Marilyn. More than likely, then, neither Margolis nor Buskin were aware that either Lawford or Heymann, certainly somebody, transformed the kitchen knife into a glass of harmless bubbly; and therefore, the repetition of that yarn should simply be excused. However, repeating any assertion which Heymann included in previous literary works about any person or celebrity cast reasonable doubt on the literary effort so repeating. Still, along with Heymann, Margolis and Buskin asserted that Marilyn planned to divulge all of her affairs during her August the 6th press conference, the one during which she would employ that kitchen knife to carve from her former lovers a pound of flesh.

There is no actual evidentiary proof that Marilyn had severed her relationship with Dr. Greenson and no actual evidentiary proof that she had terminated her relationship with her housekeeper. Some Marilyn historians point to a check Marilyn wrote to Eunice Murray in the amount of $200, indicating to them that Marilyn had fired Dr. Greenson’s spy. That being the case, why would Mrs. Murray spend the night of August the 4th after she had been terminated; and if Marilyn had terminated Dr. Greenson on August the 4th, why would she telephone him and report on her telephone conversation with the junior Joe DiMaggio?

Nothing offered by Margolis and Buskin represents any form of evidence or proof leading to an undeniable conclusion that Greenson and Marilyn were lovers or that the motives to murder Marilyn attributed to Greenson were actually real or would have led to murder even if the alleged motives had been real. The author’s source, the dubious C. David Heymann, serial fabulist, and some questionable tapes, which more than likely never existed, allegedly heard by Peter Law­ford, deceased, certainly interjects more than a reasonable doubt, especially when combined with the dubious testimony of James Hall, ambulance attendant, and Norman Jefferies, handy­man, both undeniably questionable witnesses. All the preceding notwithstanding, Marilyn’s autopsy conclusively proved that Greenson did not inject Marilyn’s heart with drugs. In short, and if anything, more evidence exists which disproves the orthodoxy involving Dr. Greenson, lover and murderer.

But one final question: considering just how much Marilyn apparently enjoyed writing about her love affairs, some have alleged, why did she fail to mention her torrid affair with Dr. Greenson in her little Red Book of Secrets, assuming, that is, you believe that Marilyn’s Little Red Diary actually existed? The absence of the affair from what various testifiers reportedly read in that MacGuffin might be interpreted to mean that Marilyn’s affair with Dr. Greenson never occurred; but then, many things about the life and death of Marilyn Monroe have been reported which actually never occurred.