Douglas Thompson - Bombshell: The Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Monroe

Mike Rothmiller

New York Times Bestselling Author

Mike Rothmiller has enjoyed a distinguished career in law enforcement working across US Federal and State agencies and with American and international intelligence services. He served for ten years with the Los Angeles Police Department [LAPD] including five years as a deep undercover detective with the Organized Crime Intelligence Division [OCID].

He was a member of the US Department of Justice Organized Crime Strike Force and provided secret Grand Jury testimony regarding the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy. He conceived and directed global intelligence operations targeting multi-national crime groups, terrorism, and political corruption, from Chile to Washington and London to Israel. In his long career Mike Rothmiller has encountered all manner of mendacity and atrocity but he remains most shaken by his investigation into the death of Marilyn Monroe. He regards Bombshell as the rich and important culmination of a lifetime of inquiries which will achieve legal redress, posthumously in some cases, and correct the fabricated history about the death of Marilyn Monroe and those who used her.

Alongside his dedication to public service, Mike Rothmiller established a media career producing television documentaries and working as a correspondent and presenter for Americas PBS, ESPN and other international television markets. He is a regular commentator on law enforcement and worldwide intelligence matters across America and throughout the world. He is a New York Times bestselling author of 23 non-fiction books.

DEDICATION

For my wife, Nancy, and the memory of Marilyn.

Douglas Thompson

Sunday Times Bestselling Author

Douglas Thompson is the author of many non-fiction books covering an eclectic mix of subjects from major Hollywood biographies to revelatory bestsellers about remarkable people and events. Four of his books are at present being developed for global television, another for film in Hollywood by MGM. With Christine Keeler, he wrote her revealing memoir The Truth At Last. That instant bestseller was revised as Secrets and Lies: The Trials of Christine Keeler and the audio version recorded by actress Sophie Cookson who played Christine to critical acclaim in the successful BBC television series. His works, published in a dozen languages, include the television-based anthology Hollywood People, and a worldwide selling biography of Clint Eastwood. He collaborated with Michael Flatley on the Sunday Times bestseller Lord of the Dance. He divides his time between a medieval Suffolk village and California, where he was based as a Fleet Street correspondent and columnist for more than twenty years.

www.dougiethompson.com.

DEDICATION

For Effie Perrine who began it all, and Robert Evans, Cary Grant, Lloyd Bridges, Mike Qualls, Richard Gulley, Alan Whitey Snyder, Shelley Winters, Lauren Bacall, Yvonne De Carlo, Robert Mitchum, Bob Werden, John Huston, Judith Exner, Marian Collier Neuman, Angie and the many others who helped. And for Mike Rothmiller who placed the missing pieces and proved the power of the long arm of time.

THE NIGHT
BOBBY KENNEDY
KILLED
MARILYN
MONROE

MIKE ROTHMILLER
AND
DOUGLAS THOMPSON

To find images illustrating the text of this book please scan the QR below.

While Bombshell clearly demonstrates the illegal activities of the Los Angeles Police Departments [LAPD] Intelligence Division, it must be remembered the vast majority of those serving in law enforcement are dedicated, honest individuals performing a difficult job. During LAPDs decades of illegal intelligence operations, no cop outside of OCID, except the chief, knew the sinister depths of the operations.

Mike Rothmiller.

John hasnt called. Bobby called. Hes coming to California. He wants to see me.

from Marilyn Monroes diary, 1962, revealed for the first time in Bombshell, 2021.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Neil Sedaka, number one, Billboard Top Hundred, August 1962.

The beginning of the end of Marilyn Monroes life began when a black Lincoln Continental appeared as a shimmer in the sun as it carefully turned out of Los Angeles International Airport onto Imperial Highway and pointed its deluxe chassis north toward Santa Monica and beyond.

In the grand theatre of gender what defined Marilyn Monroe as a woman was the way men looked at her. Yet, a sinister metamorphosis had overwhelmed important men in her life, that faction of the fabulous and famous, once devoted to and so transparently enthralled by her. By the time that highly polished Lincoln slowed gently, took a right at San Vicente Boulevard and turned east toward Los Angeles proper, the most fearful of Monroes lovers was adamant about his intention to resolve the problem.

The conversation in the car had been muted but what hed been told as he glanced out at the Pacific Ocean at the start of the tense drive convinced him entirely that the only solution left was for Marilyn Monroe to die. The driver suggested, again and again, that she might see sense and be reasonable but that brought not the smallest diminution of Marilyn Monroes ability to trouble and disquiet one of the most powerful men in the world.

She knew more about illusions than any of them but this time shed created not an intoxicating fantasy, but a nightmare.

Men do not see me, shed complained, they just lay their eyes on me.

That was before.

That Saturday, August 4, 1962, as the strong Santa Anas, the devil winds, hazed the southern California coast, Hollywoods most marketable and dazzling star, the worlds most popular sex symbol, was being viewed in an altogether different and deadly way by some feverishly determined individuals.

Truth is the daughter of Time.

ancient proverb.

Even after life, Peter Lawford, actor, charmer, and longtime brother-in-law to the princes of the Kennedy Camelot, directly connects to Marilyn Monroe. He is the pointer to her crypt at Westwood Memorial Park on the westside of Los Angeles not too far from Brentwood where she died so many years ago. Natalie Wood is nearby on the Walk of Memory lane which skirts through the cemetery, but it is Lawfords memorial stone that leads the way to what, for millions, is an altar to Marilyn; the daily gatherings of fans and floral tributes testify to that. Her name, with the dates of her short life, 19261962, is marked out on the muted marble wall with fan wishes marked in cherry red lipstick and other delible notes faded by the heat, worn like her monument by the salty breeze blown in from the Pacific. Every visitor brings their own ideas and images along this particular memory lane, and Marilyn Monroe continues to accommodate each and every perception. In life it was her remarkable gift and curse: she could be anybody or anything you wanted her to be. Her ending came when she became trouble.

Truth, like all material, can be squeezed and bent, angled and cut into whatever shape is required, what conclusions need to be drawn, which lives, and careers, need to be saved and which are quite dispensable. Rarely has it been twisted so expertly as in the death of Marilyn Monroe.

This is a sensational book but what sets it apart from all others is that the source material is equally sensational. It calls on secret Los Angeles police intelligence files and first-hand and previously unheard testimony from the man who was present at the end of Marilyn Monroes life. The man who watched her die.