Marilyn Monroe's long-lost secret diary revealed for first time: JFK's obscene sex demand... and deathbed note detective says proves RFK murdered her
- Sign up to the free weekly The Crime Desk newsletter here
For decades, Marilyn Monroe's missing 'red diary' has belonged to the realm of Hollywood myth - one more tantalizing object said to have vanished into the darkness after the screen icon's death.
But now Mike Rothmiller, a retired Los Angeles Police Department detective, insists the tome was real, and that he found it.
Hidden deep within a maze of secret dossiers locked inside an LAPD intelligence-gathering department, Rothmiller says, lay something the world had considered lost.
Throughout as many as 70 photocopied pages torn from a small binder and filled with neat handwriting in block letters were a woman's private thoughts, intimate memories and anecdotes.
Page after page, the author wrote of sex, betrayal and two powerful men she called simply 'John' and 'Bobby.'
This, Rothmiller immediately believed, was the long-lost diary of Marilyn Monroe.
There were details of her sexual escapades and ultimately doomed romances with President John F Kennedy - from trysts in a pool to complaints about his 'selfish' bedroom habits - and his younger brother, Attorney General Robert F Kennedy.
Other entries went far beyond the bounds of pillow talk into the realms of America's foreign policy, including the administration's top-secret plot to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
For decades, Marilyn Monroe's missing 'red diary' has belonged to the realm of Hollywood myth
Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and President John F Kennedy (left to right) at JFK's 45th birthday celebrations at Madison Square Garden in New York City in May 1962
In the later pages, there was her growing fury and frustration with the two Kennedys who she perceived had used her and cast her aside.
And then, Rothmiller says, there were her final entries - on August 3, 1962 - in which Monroe would unknowingly rewrite the history books about her final moments and death.
'Peter said Robert will come tomorrow,' one line said.
Within hours of writing that entry, the starlet was dead, her shocking fate plastered on the front pages of newspapers and TV screens across the globe and fueling conspiracy theories ever since.
To Rothmiller, however, those indelible words had destroyed the decades-long, official story that Monroe, 36, died alone, by suicide from a barbiturates overdose in her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Instead, she had placed RFK not only in Los Angeles but more than likely inside her home at the time of her death.
His discovery of Monroe's secret diary that had vanished not long after she died was, he says, only the start.
It was the beginning of a trail that would lead through secret wire-tapped phone transcripts, incriminating surveillance photographs, troves of confidential investigative documents and, finally, a bombshell confession from the man claiming to have watched as Monroe was handed a poisoned drink and took her final breath.
All this led Rothmiller to what he concludes is the explosive truth: that Robert F Kennedy, the then-attorney general of the United States, murdered Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe on August 4, 1962, in a cover-up involving one of the country's most powerful dynasties.
Now, after staying silent for decades - in part because of what he describes as an assassination attempt on his own life - Rothmiller believes it is time that history is retold.
Which is why he is calling on LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman to launch a new probe into Monroe's death and expose the dark reality once and for all.
Scene photo of Marilyn Monroe's bedroom following her death in August 1962 at the age of 36
Empty pill bottles were found in her bedroom. A responding officer on the scene later said the scene looked staged
In a letter to Hochman, exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail, Rothmiller urges the DA to 'open an investigation and thoroughly reexamine the circumstances of Marilyn Monroe's death.'
Rothmiller is also demanding an exhaustive new toxicology analysis on her blood, tissue or body fluids to test 'for a broad spectrum of deadly substances that were not considered or known during the original autopsy.'
As he told the Daily Mail: 'History has to be accurate. If there is a mistake, history has to be corrected.'
It was 1978 when the young detective was assigned to LAPD's secretive Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID), giving him unfettered access to its confidential intelligence files on politicians, movie stars, mobsters and journalists alike.
Suspicion of criminal activity, Rothmiller said, was hardly a prerequisite for ending up in the dossiers. The methods used to gather information - wiretaps, hidden bugs, break-ins, covert surveillance - were often deeply questionable and, at times, outright illegal.
The most top-secret documents were locked in a room, filed in coded systems so complicated that 'nobody would be able to just go in and find them if they didn't know how it worked,' Rothmiller said.
There, he found not only thousands and thousands of dossiers on the Kennedys and the doomed Hollywood star, but one file marked: 'Monroe's Diary.'
The diary entries detailed Monroe's affairs with both brothers - relationships that allegedly began after actor Peter Lawford married into the political dynasty in 1954.
As the husband of their sister, Patricia Kennedy, Lawford connected the worlds of Hollywood and Washington, hosting parties at his Santa Monica beach home for the likes of Monroe, Robert Wagner and Frank Sinatra.
Mike Rothmiller, a retired Los Angeles Police Department detective, believes he found Monroe's missing diary
In the pages, Monroe wrote about her affairs with 'John' and 'Bobby' - President JFK and Attorney General RFK
According to Rothmiller, Monroe wrote that her love affair with RFK began there.
'Bobby and I made love at Peter's. He wants to see me again. This is our secret,' one entry said of their first night together.
When it came to RFK especially, Monroe seemed to be in love - a feeling that she believed was reciprocated.
'Bobby is gentle. He listens to me. He's nicer than John,' she wrote. 'Bobby said he loves me and wants to marry me. I love him.'
JFK, meanwhile, 'always wants me to blow him,' she complained. 'We just kiss and have sex. I wish it was more but it's not.'
There is a tragic irony that it would be the 'gentle, loving' RFK who would go on to kill her, Rothmiller claims.
Looking through the personal lens of the world's biggest film star, Rothmiller said the pages painted a picture not only of Monroe's heartbreak but of the Kennedys' behavior that was dangerously 'reckless.'
The brothers were revealed to be enjoying sex parties, carrying on affairs with the most famous woman in the world and mingling with mobsters right under the noses of their families and the American electorate.
'They were both living a very reckless life for politicians. Their affairs could have ended their careers,' he says.
'Her diary also showed how, for want of a better term, one brother just turned Marilyn over to the other brother.'
Peter Lawford introducing Marilyn Monroe on stage at Madison Square Garden to sing Happy Birthday to JFK
Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford and Robert Kennedy head to a charity fundraising dinner in Los Angeles in 1961
By 1962, Rothmiller believes that the Kennedy camp seemed to realize that such recklessness could not continue.
Rumors about the Kennedys and Monroe were already swirling. Investigative journalist Dorothy Kilgallen called the Department of Justice on August 1 to ask if the attorney general would confirm their affair.
The weekend before her death, Lawford warned Monroe never to contact the Kennedys again and she was 'cut off' by the White House and the DOJ, OCID files and her diary entries show.
Her rage spilled across the pages - as did her vowed refusal to go away quietly.
'They are not calling back. Bob and John used me. I told Peter they're ignoring me. I'm not going to stand for that. I'm going to tell everyone about us,' she wrote days before her death.
At the time, Rothmiller said OCID files revealed that the homes of Monroe and Lawford were bugged and listening devices had been placed on their phones.
Phone transcripts show that Monroe pledged revenge, telling friends that she would hold a press conference to tell the nation about her affair with both the president and the attorney general and to spill confidential White House intel on such subjects as Cuba and Castro.
'I told Jose I'm going to tell the world about them. They used me. I'm not a whore. Jose said don't tell anyone about this. It's dangerous,' she wrote in another entry, referring to her actor friend Jose Bolanos.
Reading those diary entries dating from her final days, Rothmiller says it was clear there was an escalation. 'She was livid and really angry when she thought she was being tossed aside.'
In the days leading up to her death, Monroe's diary allegedly revealed her fury at RFK and JFK for casting her aside
President John F. Kennedy on the beach at Peter Lawford's beach house in Santa Monica
If she went public, it likely would have 'destroyed the presidency and the future of the Kennedy dynasty.'
Yet, despite the power of the people she was preparing to expose - and the fervent warnings from friends - there was no sense that Monroe feared for her own safety even when noting that the Kennedys were paying attention to her threats.
'John hasn't called. Bobby called. He's coming to California. He wants to see me,' read one entry.
Then came one of the last entries, that has haunted Rothmiller ever since he read it: 'Peter said Robert will come tomorrow. I don't know if he will.'
No press conference ever took place.
The real reason why, Rothmiller says, would only emerge following a chance meeting at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion in 1982 when Lawford allegedly unburdened himself at last.
To Rothmiller, Lawford had been laboring under the guilt for two decades and finally cracked.
'Sometimes people just break down,' he said, 'because they've been carrying that burden for so long. If you hit them at the right time, in the right manner, whether it's an interview or a harsh interrogation, they just decide that's it, and they start talking. That's what happened with him. I think he was carrying the guilt for such a long time.
'When he told me, it wasn't a secret any longer. It was like a weight off his shoulders.'
According to Rothmiller's account of what Lawford told him, RFK secretly flew to LA on August 4, 1962 to see Monroe, just as she had written.
Marilyn Monroe sings Happy Birthday to President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in May 1962
Peter Lawford and Robert Kennedy. After a chance encounter with Lawford in 1982, Rothmiller said that he confessed to watching Monroe die
Lawford said that he and RFK visited her twice - once in daylight hours and again in the evening. From his understanding, the aim was to stop Monroe from going public and to remove any items linking her to the Kennedys, including her diary.
During that second visit, Rothmiller claims that things quickly became heated. Monroe screamed that she was not going to tolerate the Kennedys treating her 'like a whore' and RFK violently threw her to the floor.
At one point, Lawford recalled RFK rifling through drawers, before pinning Monroe down and screaming: 'Where is it?'
While Lawford tried to defuse the situation and comfort the hysterical actress, he heard RFK in the kitchen.
He broke down as he told Rothmiller how he found RFK holding a glass of water and stirring it with a spoon, before handing it to Monroe.
After she drank it, remarking on the unpleasant taste, Lawford and RFK continued to search the house. When the pair returned to the room, Monroe lay slumped on the sofa where they had left her. RFK shook her and she groggily stirred and mumbled something inaudible. Then she passed out and stopped breathing.
Rothmiller said Lawford sobbed as he recalled seeing Monroe's waxen, lifeless body and realizing she was dead.
Two plain-clothed LAPD officers suddenly appeared at the door. No words were uttered but Lawford and RFK left immediately and sped to the airport.
Several hours passed before a 911 call was placed the next morning by Monroe's personal physician.
It was then that Monroe's death entered the public record in an entirely different form: she was found naked, face down on her bed, with several empty prescription bottles nearby.
By the time the news broke, RFK was presenting himself as a family man at a church service with his wife and children near San Francisco.
Peter Lawford allegedly told Rothmiller that RFK put something in Monroe's glass of water
A former LAPD officer turned private investigator - who bugged Monroe's home - allegedly revealed in an interview with Rothmiller that he listened first-hand to the commotion inside her home on the night she died
For decades, the story held that RFK had never been in LA that day. Rothmiller says that the secret OCID files tell another account, fabricated by the highest levels of the LAPD as part of a widespread cover-up to protect the Kennedys.
Monroe's personal diary - something she never intended anyone to read - helped convince him that the public record was incomplete, revealing the identity of her killer by placing RFK at the scene of her murder.
'As far as we knew, her diary had vanished and was never found,' Rothmiller said.
'Then what shocked me the most was her writing that Bobby was coming to see her that day. It corroborated all the other stuff,' he said of the secret OCID dossiers and accounts from other informants.
Her diary had led him to interrogate Lawford and elicit the final piece of the puzzle: his bombshell confession.
Fred Otash was a former LAPD officer turned private investigator who was notorious for bugging homes and telephones. Otash allegedly revealed in an interview with Rothmiller that he listened first-hand to the commotion - furious arguments between RFK and Monroe, people rummaging and sounds of a struggle - inside her home that night.
Rothmiller said that Sergeant Jack Clemmons, the first officer to officially respond, also told him that the scene was staged, with livor mortis on Monroe's back indicating she had been turned face down after death while her housekeeper was doing laundry and her psychiatrist was flushing pills.
Rothmiller's pursuit of the truth would allegedly place his own life in danger. Only weeks after he interrogated Lawford, he recounts that a gunman on a motorbike pulled up alongside his car and shot him. To this day, he does not know if he was targeted because of his investigation.
John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy walking in front of the Capitol in 1957. For years, the official story has been that RFK was not in LA when Monroe died
Dr Thomas Noguchi, the 'coroner to the stars,' also later claimed he faced political pressure when carrying out Monroe's autopsy and said that her internal organs had been disposed of before he could order toxicology testing. Other evidence, including medical samples and photographs, also allegedly disappeared.
The official autopsy found fatal levels of chloral hydrate and pentobarbital in Monroe's system and her death was quickly ruled a probable suicide caused by a sedative overdose.
Without more testing, it is impossible to know what RFK allegedly poisoned her with.
Rothmiller speculates that it could have been a high dose of choral hydrate or Nembutal, or another substance to which the intelligence agencies had widespread access at the time.
The answer, he believes, could lie in a new toxicology analysis of any remaining bodily tissues using advancements in testing able to detect substances not possible at the time.
Through his investigative work, Rothmiller believes he has uncovered around 95 percent of the truth about what he contends is the murder of Monroe.
'The other 5 percent is still unknown because the people involved are dead and never talked,' he said. 'And some documents likely have been destroyed forever.'
Since publishing the findings in his book, Bombshell: The Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Monroe, Rothmiller says that several former OCID officers made contact, telling him about other files and surveillance photos of RFK and Lawford in LA on the day that Monroe died.
'They wouldn't speak on the record or go public, but they told me: 'You absolutely nailed it.'
Rothmiller has no doubt that there was a conspiracy to get rid of Monroe and then cover it up, involving the upper echelons of the government as well as the LAPD
The retired detective is calling on LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman to launch a new probe into Monroe's death
Rothmiller has no doubt that there was a conspiracy to get rid of Monroe and then cover it up, involving the upper echelons of the government as well as the LAPD.
He is not, however, as certain that RFK went to the house to kill Monroe that day or if he realized during the visit that he couldn't control or silence her.
But he believes that there was a pattern of people being used and discarded by the Kennedys at that time.
'With great wealth and great power, which that family had at the time, things happen,' Rothmiller says.
'Various people within their circle of friends and acquaintances all of a sudden would become expendable.'
Rothmiller is hopeful that the DA's office can now uncover the missing 5 percent of evidence by launching an investigation. 'If they don't, it puts them in the hot seat,' he says, 'and begs the question: Why would you not be willing to look into this?'
