Murder Orthodoxies: A Non-Conspiracist's View of Marilyn Monroe's Death
Section 10
Tape Recordings and Pornography
Following the publication of Capell’s anti-Communist, anti-Kennedy philippic, Mailer’s biographical novel and Slatzer’s tarradiddle, most, if not all, of the conspiracists promoting a Marilyn murder orthodoxy asserted that audio tape recordings of Marilyn existed, recordings of her speaking voice, recorded during her telephone conversations, recordings of her emitting sounds, recorded during her moments of delight and pleasure as she made love with John and Robert Kennedy, both separately and together. According to the conspiracists, everybody was recording Marilyn Monroe, even Marilyn Monroe. There must have been an almost innumerable quantity of eavesdropping and tape recording devices attached to her Ma Bell telephone drops, her actual telephones or planted somewhere in her house, in her bedroom, in her kitchen or perhaps, even under the rim of her porcelain water closet. Marilyn’s Fifth Helena hacienda must have had more bugs inside it than an African termite mound. Two famous wire tappers, infamous may be a more precise word, however, who allegedly made recordings of Marilyn engaging in intercourse, both verbal and sexual, were professional eavesdroppers, Fred Otash and Bernard Spindel. Each man left behind a memoir of sorts: Fred Otash published Investigation Hollywood! in 1976 and Bernard Spindel published The Ominous Ear in 1968.