Killing Kennedy

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August 5, 1962. Marilyn Monroe lies naked facedown on her bed. She is dead. Police investigators see no sign of trauma. The Los Angeles coroner will later conclude that the actress died from an overdose of barbiturates. Yet her stomach is almost completely empty, with no pill residue whatsoever.

The public instantly chalks up Marilyn’s death to a life of excess. The tabloids have firmly established that she is a substance abuser. So there is little public outcry for a closer look at what happened to the glamorous actress.

But there is a darker theory circulating in the precincts of organized crime. Mafia lore suggests that the old Sam Giancana–CIA connection from the Operation Mongoose days is still quietly active. The theory holds that Giancana conspired to have Monroe murdered by a team of four hit men who entered her home, taped her mouth shut, and injected a lethal suppository of barbiturates and chloral hydrate into her anus. This was done to prevent the vomiting that often accompanies an oral drug overdose. The tape was removed from her mouth once she was dead, and Monroe’s body wiped clean.

Giancana’s motivation was revenge for Bobby Kennedy’s ongoing Justice Department investigations into organized criminal activity. The intent of the killers, according to that same Mafia legend, was to implicate Bobby in the murder. However, their plans went awry when Bobby was tipped off by anonymous sources that Marilyn Monroe had unexpectedly died. The attorney general then ordered Peter Lawford to arrange for a private eye named Fred Otash to go over Marilyn’s home with a fine-tooth comb to ensure there was absolutely no evidence of her involvement with the president or the Kennedy family. The two men cleaned up well, even taking Marilyn’s diary.

There was also, however, the issue of Marilyn’s phone records. These would show whom she was talking to in the last forty-eight hours of her life. The story goes on to say that Bobby Kennedy appealed to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to expunge those records. Not wanting to lose the chance to use Monroe’s death for political gain, the legend continues, Los Angeles police chief William Parker obtained a copy of those records and kept them in his garage for years, as blackmail evidence. The tapes, Parker would say, are “my ticket to get Hoover’s job when Bobby Kennedy becomes president.”

Peter Lawford will later claim that Bobby was in Monroe’s home that night, having flown down from the Bay Area, where he was staying with Ethel and four of their children. Lawford’s story, not confirmed by anyone, alleges that Marilyn was going to reveal her former relationship with JFK to the press and that Bobby was present in Los Angeles trying to do damage control.

The recollections of both Lawford and Mafia members have been dissected thoroughly. Neither has been proven true. Nor have the rumors that Bobby and Marilyn were having an affair of their own.

The facts are that Marilyn Monroe phoned Bobby several times throughout the summer of 1962. She was distraught over the end of her affair with JFK and was openly gossiping about it in Hollywood. The press had begun asking questions about the alleged affair, and it appeared that the matter might surface during the 1964 election. Yet the Northern California ranch where Bobby and his family were staying on the night of Marilyn’s death was an hour from the nearest airport and a five-hour drive from Los Angeles. That makes it highly unlikely that RFK could have slipped away without being noticed.

Any involvement by Bobby Kennedy in Marilyn Monroe’s death, whether it was suicide or murder, makes it a conspiracy theory without substance to this day.

There is no question, however, that Monroe’s going public could have been enough to sink a presidential campaign. JFK was perceived to be a dedicated family man. Details of a sordid affair with the flamboyant Monroe would have ruined the image of Camelot.

With family baggage all over the place, Bobby Kennedy knows he is anything but a sure thing for the presidency. Which means he must work extra hard to discredit his main rival, Lyndon Johnson, before LBJ does the same to him.

Meanwhile, Bobby Kennedy is quietly backing away from his anti-Mafia investigations.

No sense angering old friends unnecessarily.

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LBJ is making new friends. He is thrilled by the presence of black voters at his St. Augustine dinner speech. It is a Monday evening, and the occasion is the five hundredth anniversary of the city’s founding, an event about which LBJ cares little. What matters are the symbolic reasons he flew to Florida in the first place: his courtship of black Americans.

LBJ’s brown eyes scan the mostly white audience in the Ponce de Leon Hotel’s ballroom. Finally, he locates the so-called Negro tables. The vice president insisted upon this act of integration when accepting the speaking engagement.

Johnson sees both tables right up front, a handful of black faces in a sea of white southerners. The people seated there nod their heads somberly as he speaks, appreciative just to be in the room. Tonight marks the first time that blacks have been allowed to eat in this fabled hotel, all thanks to LBJ. Two tables aren’t many, and the change is only for tonight, but at least Johnson can return to Washington bragging that he’s on the front lines of the battle for racial equality.

It’s a powerful feeling. Yet back in Washington, LBJ has all but forgotten what power feels like. On the road, he’s a big deal. People defer to him. He meets with local leaders. He is quoted in the local papers. People want to touch him or enjoy one of his patented high-energy handshakes, the kind where Johnson wraps his meaty fist around another man’s, then holds on for as long as they talk, forging a friendship and, in the old days back in the Senate, winning their vote.

But he is now invisible in Washington. For Johnson, the Kennedy White House is not Camelot. He compares the experience with another c word: castration. LBJ refers to himself as a “steer” or a “cut dog.” The president deliberately excludes him from important meetings, makes jokes about him behind his back, and ignores him at White House dinner parties—if he even bothers to invite him at all.

The president isn’t the only one treating Johnson with contempt. Bobby Kennedy thinks LBJ is a political charlatan. Jackie Kennedy keeps her distance. And the White House staff can barely conceal their disdain. “The Harvards,” as Johnson calls them, make fun of his ill-fitting suits, his slicked-back hair, and the twang of his Texas Hill Country accent. When Johnson commits the faux pas of pronouncing hors d’oeuvres as “whore doves” at one party, he instantly becomes the butt of Washington jokes about his hillbilly ways.

One derogatory nickname for Johnson is “Uncle Cornpone,” as if he were some irrelevant hick instead of the man who got Kennedy elected in 1960 by carrying the Deep South. Some refer to him as “Judge Crater,” for the