According to Cherrault, when a crime prevention officer, Detective Constable William Kemp, came round on a follow-up visit, he said: “I am assuming you are not recording this conversation. I have examined your report. I have to tell you that you were not burgled but targeted.”
“You mean the grey men?” said Cherrault, meaning intelligence agents.
The policeman replied: “MI5, Flying Squad or hired local hoodlums.”
He also said: “Not to worry, your lives were not in any danger.” Nevertheless, this upset Christine Cherrault who broke down in tears.
When questioned by officers from Operation Paget, DC Kemp denied mentioning MI5, the Flying Squad or hire hoodlums, but admitted saying something along the lines of what Cherrault had said.
“By this I meant that I was unhappy with the fact that it seemed to be too much of a coincidence that Diana had died in a car crash twenty-four hours before the burglary of a royal photographer,” he said.
One of the stolen credit cards was used to make a call to Ireland and a stolen cheque, made out for £920, was presented at a bank in Suffolk.
The burglar had tried to take Cherrault’s BMW but was foiled by the security system. Instead, he took Christine Cherrault’s Mitsubishi Cruiser people carrier to transport the stolen items. It was found the following evening, parked near to the Stonebridge Park estate in north-west London, a few miles from the scene of the burglary. Cherrault was surprised when he heard that no fingerprints had been found in the vehicle, even though it had been used for the school run.
A DNA profile was later obtained from a cigarette butt found in the recovered vehicle. This matched a forty-two-year-old man who was a known criminal and had numerous convictions for theft and other offences. He was a drug addict and suspected crack cocaine dealer who lived with his mother just 300 yards (275 m) from the Cherraults’ home. Early that year, he had been living with a man who had convictions for aggravated burglary just 400 yards (365 m) from where the Mitsubishi Cruiser was abandoned.
When the suspect was arrested, he denied being involved in the burglary and the theft of the vehicle, explaining that he may have accepted a lift in the vehicle not knowing it was stolen. A file was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), but the CPS recommended that no further action should be taken against him. There was no indication that the security services were involved.
Mohamed al-Fayed claimed that the offices of Darryn Lyons, the owner of the Big Picture Agency who had received pictures of the crash by ISDN line, had been burgled at around 11 p.m. on 31 August 1997. Operation Paget found that this was not true. However, on 4 September 1997, Lyons returned late to his office at night to find it in darkness. He called the police because, after a news item on television said the Big Picture Agency was trying to sell the photographs, the company received threatening phone calls. Like other agents, he had been sent photographs of the crash, but he decided not to publish them and handed the hard drive containing the photographs to the police. On 4 September, the police found that no property had been taken and there was no sign of a forced entry, but the cause of the power outage could not be identified. Again, there was no evidence of any involvement of the security services.
According to Mohamed al-Fayed, Princess Diana’s body was embalmed in France before it was shipped back to conceal the fact that she was pregnant with Dodi’s child. Operation Paget concluded that no pregnancy test was carried out in France or in Britain. The authorities had no requirement, or reason, to carry one out. There was nothing unusual about the embalming process and no reason to believe that it was done to conceal a pregnancy.
“The evidence shows that all involved in the decision to embalm the Princess of Wales believed it was necessary to make her body presentable before viewing,” the Stevens Report concluded. “Jean Monceau, an experienced French embalmer, believed this was the only way to ensure the Princess of Wales was presentable. He discounted the use of dry ice or mortuary cleansing because of the extent of her injuries.”
The report found that there was no evidence the Diana was pregnant or that she intended to announce her engagement to Dodi al-Fayed, beyond Mohamed al-Fayed’s claim. Nor was there any evidence that Diana and Dodi were murdered by MI6 on the orders of the Duke of Edinburgh.
According to Mohamed al-Fayed, the matter could be cleared up by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, the United States’ electronic eavesdropping service at Fort Meade, Maryland, which admitted having more than a thousand pages of information on Diana on file, but refused to release them on the grounds of national security. It is thought that the United States’ interceptions of Diana’s telephone conversations were shared with British intelligence and the royal family, and could have provided the motivation for her assassination.
A
T AROUND
4
A.M
. on 5 August 1962, the naked body of one of the world’s most beautiful woman was found face down in her bed at 12035 Fifth Helena Avenue in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. Marilyn Monroe was dead. The coroner, Theodore Curphey, concluded that she had died from acute barbiturate poisoning and recorded her death as a “probable suicide”. However, observation of the crime scene led others to a different conclusion. Sergeant Jack Clemmons, the first policeman to arrive at the scene, believed that she had been murdered.
Marilyn’s body had been found by her psychoanalyst Ralph S. Greenson. The actress had tried to commit suicide before and there had been concern that she might have overdosed earlier in the evening. The previous night, her press agent Pat Newcomb had slept over, waking around noon. Marilyn had not slept well and was tetchy. Her day began with a series of threatening phone calls. An anonymous woman called to say: “Stay away from Bobby, you bitch.”
At the time, her affair with President Kennedy had ended and his brother Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, had stepped into his shoes.
Marilyn had summoned Dr Greenson to her house and spent most of the afternoon with him, apart from the time she went for a drive with her housekeeper, Eunice Murray. While Marilyn had been alert in the morning, Greenson found her drugged and depressed. It is thought that she had taken Nembutal, the trade name of the barbiturate pentobarbital, prescribed for insomnia. Her prescription had just been filled by her physician Hyman Engelberg. Dr Greenson had been trying to wean Marilyn off Nembutal, moving her on to chloral hydrate as a sedative. But Marilyn was dependent on Nembutal and there was plenty around the house.
Pat Newcomb left Marilyn’s house at between 5.30 and 6 p.m., followed by Dr Greenson at around seven. Marilyn had just broken off her engagement to her former husband Joe DiMaggio – the couple had planned to remarry. At 7.15 p.m., DiMaggio’s son Joe Jr called to discuss the broken engagement. He said that Marilyn sounded fine. Afterwards, her mood was elevated and she called Dr Greenson to tell him about the conversation.
The actor Peter Lawford phoned at about 7.45 p.m. to invite Marilyn to a party he was having at his beach house. He said she sounded heavily drugged. Her speech was slurred and became increasingly incomprehensible. He claimed that he had to shout her name into the phone a few times when she did not respond to his conversation and that some of the things she said could be construed as suicidal. According to Lawford, who was married to Patricia Kennedy, the sister of the president, Marilyn said: “Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to the president, and say goodbye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy.”
The call ended abruptly. Lawford tried to call her back, but got the busy signal. Concerned, Lawford called Eunice Murray, who was staying the night, on a different line and asked her to check on Marilyn. She returned to the telephone and told Lawford that Marilyn was fine. Unconvinced, Lawford was tempted to go around to the house but was persuaded not to by his friend and lawyer Mickey Rudin in case his presence there attracted bad publicity. Her behaviour at the studios had become increasingly erratic and the filming of
Something’s Got to Give
had been suspended after she had turned up for just twelve of the thirty-five days of shooting. Earlier that year, Marilyn had famously sung “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in a dress that showed off her magnificent figure. Veteran diplomat Adlai Stevenson described the outfit as “skin and beads – only I didn’t see the beads”. Kennedy responded by saying: “I can now retire from politics after having, ah, ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.” This public exchange fuelled speculation that they were having an affair. Nevertheless, Lawford kept phoning.
However, according to Eunice Murray, who overheard her on the phone, Marilyn sounded happier.
“Marilyn came to her bedroom door,” said Murray. “I was sitting in the living room. And she said, ‘Good night, Mrs Murray. I think I’ll turn in now.’ And she closed the door.”
But at some point during the night, Marilyn called her friend, actress and model Jeanne Carmen.
“She wanted me to bring her over a couple of sleeping pills because she didn’t have any,” said Carmen. “I had had a few drinks and I just didn’t think I could make it over there without getting arrested. So I said, ‘Marilyn, I can’t come over.’”
Rudin claimed that he called Eunice Murray at around 8.30 p.m. and asked her to check on Marilyn. Eunice said that she checked and Marilyn was fine. At around that time, Marilyn was thought to have spoken to her hairdresser Sidney Guilaroff and told him that she knew a lot of dangerous secrets about the Kennedys. Her lover, the Mexican writer-director José Bolaños, also said he called around 9.30 p.m., claiming that she told him “something shocking . . . that would shock the whole world”. During the conversation, he said Marilyn laid down the phone without hanging up because she heard some kind of disturbance at her door.
Eunice Murray said that she walked past Marilyn’s bedroom and saw light under the door at 10 p.m., but decided not to disturb her. This is puzzling as the deep-pile carpet would have prevented any light from showing. Natalie Trundy, who was at a concert at the Hollywood Bowl with her future husband, Monroe’s publicist Arthur P. Jacobs, said that Jacobs had to leave hurriedly after Rudin informed him that Marilyn had overdosed. According to Donald Spoto, author of a 1993 biography of Monroe, Jacobs left to handle the press.
Lawford was out of the loop. Around 11 p.m., he called his friend Joe Naar who lived close to Marilyn and asked him to go to her house to make sure she had not overdosed. But just as Naar was getting ready to leave his house, he got a call from Rudin telling him not to go as Marilyn had been given a sedative by Dr Greenson.
At midnight, Eunice Murray again said that she saw a light under Marilyn’s bedroom door. This time she knocked, but got no reply. She said that she tried the door, but it was locked. Others said that there was no functioning lock on the door. Worried, she called Dr Greenson. Later, she said she went back to bed after seeing the light under the door at midnight, only calling Dr Greenson at 3 a.m. after seeing that the light was still on.
When Dr Greenson arrived, he tried to break open the door but failed. So he went outside to look through the French windows. He saw Monroe lying on the bed holding the telephone, apparently dead. The French windows were locked, so he broke the glass, opened the door and checked Marilyn for signs of life. He then called Dr Engelberg. There was some speculation that an ambulance might have been called to the house at this point and later dismissed.
When Dr Engelberg arrived, he also examined Marilyn.
“She was sprawled over the bed, and she was dead,” Dr Engelberg said. “I took out my stethoscope to make sure her heart wasn’t beating. Checked her pupils because that’s one of the sensitive ways to tell if a person is dead or not. I said she was dead. Which, of course, Dr Greenson knew anyway, but I had to go through the motions.”
Dr Engelberg told investigators that he waited up to half an hour before calling the police. Asked why there was a delay, Dr Engelberg said: “We were stunned. We were talking over what happened. What she had said.”
At 1 a.m., Rudin told Lawford that Marilyn was dead, but the police were not called until after 4 a.m. Dr Greenson and Dr Engelberg told the police that Marilyn died at around 12.30 a.m. They later amended that to 3.50 a.m.
When Sergeant Clemmons arrived at around 4.30 a.m., Dr Greenson and Eunice Murray led him to Marilyn’s bedroom where he found her face down on the bed.
“She was lying face down in what I call the soldier’s position,” said Sergeant Clemmons. “Her face was in a pillow, her arms were by her side, her right arm was slightly bent. Her legs were stretched out perfectly straight.”
It immediately struck him that she had been placed that way. He had seen a number of suicides. He knew that an overdose of sleeping tablets usually causes victims to suffer convulsions and vomiting before they die in a contorted position.
“It was not a suicide,” Clemmons later told the BBC. “Marilyn Monroe was murdered and there’s no question about it.”
Marilyn was naked and her left hand was stretched out touching the telephone on the nightstand. It is not known who she had been calling. Also on the nightstand were a number of bottles of prescription drugs. Clemmons noted there was no drinking glass. Eunice Murray explained that there was no running water in the room. Marilyn was known to have trouble swallowing pills, gagging on them even when she had water to wash them down. Later, a glass was found lying on the floor by the bed, but police claim it was not there when the room was first searched.
The room was extremely tidy and there was fresh linen on the bed. Clemmons noticed that the housekeeper had done the laundry that night and questioned her about this odd behaviour. Appearing nervous, she said that she knew the coroner would seal up the house as a crime scene and she wanted to make sure everything was neat and tidy. Clemmons also noticed that Marilyn’s body was in an advanced state of rigor mortis, which indicated that she had been dead for at least six hours. When questioned, the police noted that Eunice Murray was vague and evasive. She changed her story several times. Although she was a key witness, she took off to Europe and was not questioned again.