Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jean Mortensen, 1926) died during the night of 4-5 August 1962 at the Mexican-style bungalow which she had recently bought in Hollywood, Los Angeles. It was the first house that she had owned in her own name, having previously lived at more than 40 addresses but invariably in rented accommodation. The star of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, Some Like It Hot and The Misfits, she was at the time one of the most famous women in the world.

Her life does not seem to have been a happy one. Born poor and illegitimate, she had never known her father and had spent her childhood in various foster homes and orphanages. She had been married three times, most recently to playwright Arthur Miller, but each marriage had ended in divorce. On the night of her death she was found naked in bed with a telephone in one hand and an empty sleeping-pill bottle by her side. During the day in question, however, she had done little to suggest that she was feeling especially desperate. A regular insomniac, she had spent the morning trying to catch up on her sleep. She had seen a photographer to approve some pictures of her for a magazine, then taken delivery of some shrubs and trees for her garden. In the early evening she had ordered some antipasti from a local Italian restaurant. She had been invited to a party at the house of Bobby Kennedy, but had decided not to attend.

Friends later said they thought it odd that she should have chosen this particular moment to commit suicide, just when she seemed to be making a fresh start in life. Conspiracy theorists have suggested that there were those in or close to the Kennedy clan who...

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