An explosive new book by DailyMail.com columnist Maureen Callahan reveals the scandals that dogged Marilyn Monroe’s short life.
On Saturday, in an exclusive extract of ‘Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed’, Callahan revealed Jackie Kennedy’s 170-clause marriage contract with Aristotle Onassis and the sordid secrets of their marriage.
Now, in a new extract, Callahan delves into the enduring mystery of Marilyn Monroe’s death.
Here, we detail the extract’s ten most shocking revelations, from Marilyn’s missing phone records, to her affair with JFK, and stunning claims about how she died:
1.
Marilyn had simultaneous affairs with JFK and his married brother Bobby. Frank Sinatra also overlapped in her bed.
2.
Before her famous ‘Happy Birthday’ performance to JFK at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962, Marilyn had sex with Bobby in her dressing room backstage. Marilyn arrived ‘late to the stage’, Callahan writes. ‘Her dress was so tight she could hardly walk.’
3.
Jackie Kennedy was so incensed by the ‘Happy Birthday’ performance that she issued an ultimatum to her husband: ‘No more Marilyn. Otherwise she would divorce him — taking the children and costing him a second term — and the American people would finally know why. Her husband complied, immediately,’ Callahan writes.
4.
JFK’s brother-in-law, the actor Peter Lawford, acted as ‘pimp, fixer and drug supplier’ to the president.
5.
During a prolonged hospital stay following serious back surgery, JFK kept a poster of Marilyn by his hospital bed. ‘It had been deliberately hung upside-down, so her crotch was at Jack’s eye-level,’ Callahan reveals.
6.
Two weeks into her third marriage to playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn discovered his diary in which he called her a ‘pitiable, unpredictable waif’ and admitted that he was ’embarrassed’ by her.
7.
The Kennedys welcomed Marilyn’s affair with Bobby. Despite the fact he was married, his sister Jean wrote to Marilyn: ‘Understand that you and Bobby are the new item! We all think you should come with him when he comes back East!’
8.
Bobby and JFK believed the FBI and CIA had bugged Marilyn’s house and phone line. ‘It was a coordinated attempt to bring down both Kennedys,’ Callahan writes.
After her death in August 1962, it was admitted that the FBI ‘had been ordered to remove certain phone records’ from her LA home. ‘Recovered in the 1980s, Marilyn’s logs showed she’d called Bobby’s workplace eight times between June 25th and 30th. Her final call to him lasted eight minutes,’ Callahan reveals.
‘Reports suggest she’d had an abortion on July 20, and that the baby may have been Bobby’s,’ she adds.
9.
Former LA County deputy district attorney John Miner spoke at length to Marilyn’s psychoanalyst who let him listen to tapes of Marilyn’s therapy sessions.
Based on what he heard, Miner later said, ‘I believe I can say definitely that it was not suicide,’ Callahan reveals.
10.
In 1985, ABC News planned to air a special documentary about JFK and Bobby’s potential involvement in Marilyn’s death, but it was canceled just hours before the broadcast was due by the network’s then-president Roone Arledge, who was ‘a longtime friend of Ethel Kennedy [Bobby’s wife]’.