The details of Marilyn Monroe's final hours—and of Peter Lawford's involvement in them—have fueled speculation for decades. But as more witnesses have forward, many have admitted that the rumors they'd denied for years were in fact true. VFArchive
Neither did it occur to him, at first, that anybody else was. But by late July 1962, he, Jack, and Peter had become aware of the fact that Peter's beach house and both Marilyn's house on Fifth Helena Drive and her apartment on Doheny were bugged. The Kennedy brothers' affairs with Marilyn Monroe, they both now realized, had left them extraordinarily vulnerable.
After a few moments of silence, Marilyn said,"You know something? What really has me scared is all the strange clicks and sounds I've been hearing on my phone lately. That's why I called you from a pay phone. I don't know what to think." According to Otash, Bernard Spindel, an East Coast wiretap specialist, approached him in the last months of Marilyn's life about bugging the star's house for a client Spindel would not name. ''Spindel came out to California and wanted me to engineer the wiring of her home, the placing of illicit devices in the bedroom and wiretaps on the phone... and I said, 'No, I don't want to be any part of that.
By mid-July, both Kennedy brothers knew that their affairs with Marilyn had put the administration in great jeopardy. According to Otash, a disgruntled former employee of his had tipped Peter off about the bugging devices in his house. Suddenly it was clear that any number of Kennedy enemies could have gathered damaging information about the president and the attorney general.
In the hope that a change of scenery might do Marilyn some good, Peter and Pat took her in late July to the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe, a casino resort allegedly co-owned by Frank Sinatra and Sam Giancana. It was a disastrous weekend during which, according to restaurateur Mike Romanoff's wife, Gloria,"they were all drinking a great deal." Marilyn told Gloria that she had become so immune to the effects of barbiturates that they no longer worked for her except in large doses.
The most disturbing of them was Marilyn's ultimatum that unless she heard from Bobby, unless he explained to her face-to-face why their relationship was over, she would hold a press conference and reveal their affair. She hinted to Peter that she had tapes of herself and Bobby, tapes she would play to prove what would be a startling revelation.
The next night, Friday, August 3, Peter took Marilyn to a local restaurant to dine with him and Pat Newcomb, one of Monroe's press agents and an intimate friend. Once again Marilyn became badly intoxicated, so much so that she failed to recognize Billy Travilla when he came over to the table to say hello.
Deeply rattled, Marilyn couldn't get to sleep even after the calls stopped, and by daybreak she was exhausted. She called Jeanne Carmen and suggested she come over with a bag of sleeping pills and drink some wine with her."We were sleeping-pill buddies," Carmen recalled. But she was busy that day and begged off.he murky details of Marilyn Monroe's last hours alive, and of Peter Lawford's involvement in them, have fueled speculation for three decades.
A number of surveillance experts— among them Fred Otash and Bernard Spindel's aide Earl Jaycox—have stated that they listened to some of the tapes made at Monroe's home, including one recorded on the day she died. Their accounts of what is contained on the tape are remarkably similar.