Marilyn Exhumed Again

CBS broadcast an episode of their true crime show 48 Hours last night titled "The Marilyn Tapes," featuring what they laughingly called their investigation of her supposedly mysterious death and featuring supposedly revelatory excerpts of tape recordings.

The show was as tawdry and unreliable as just about every other tabloid TV program about Monroe's death. There's little good to say about any show that relies on the claims of Monroe biographer Anthony Summers and the foolish and pathetic Jeanne Carmen, whose claims of an intimate friendship with Monroe were discredited by author Donald Spoto. But Carmen even discredits herself within this program. Twice she says that Monroe called her shortly before her death asking Carmen to bring over some Nembutal because Monroe had run out.

The program then interviewed a forensic expert named Karsh who made a big deal about where Monroe could possibly have gotten all the pills that were on her nighstand, which are clearly visible in a photo shown onscreen.

The titular tapes revealed nothing new. They are audio tapes of interviews made by a Los Angeles County Assistant DA named Mike Carroll who was assigned the task in 1982 of looking into the thoroughness of the original police and coroner's investigation into Monroe's death. Carroll interviewed Monroe's physician, Dr. Hyman Engleberg and other witnesses to her death. Carroll concluded that there was no evidence that Monroe was murdered.

This program is a new low for CBS, once called the Tiffany Network and once the home of responsible journalism.

The program rehashes all the rumors about Monroe and Jack and Bobby Kennedy. As Mel Ayton has written, there is no evidence that Bobby Kennedy had an affair with Monroe and it was not possible for him to have been at her home on the day she died, supposedly fighting with her over her infamous (and nonexistent) red diary. Bobby Kennedy spent the entire weekend with his wife at the ranch of his friend John Bates in Gilroy, California (near San Francisco). The CBS producers could have discovered this online in a half hour, tops.

Considering how he let the air out of the conspiracy balloon, I'm very surprised that the interview with DA Carroll was left in at all.