LOS ANGELES -- The enduring legend of sex goddess Marilyn Monroe, dead two decades of a drug overdose, has taken on elements of a movie thriller -- complete with international intrigue, CIA assassins and hypodermic needles.
The illegitimate girl born Norma Jean Baker continues to both fascinate the public with reports -- however suspect -- of a missing 'red diary,' affairs with the Kennedys and murder plots.
Conspiracy theories surrounding the Aug. 5, 1962 death of the international sex symbol -- for years grist for hundreds of tabloid and movie magazine articles -- took on unexpected legitimacy on the 20th anniversary of her demise.
The district attorney last week ordered its first investigation into the actress' death after a flurry of reports disputed the official ruling that Marilyn Monroe, depressed and alone, locked her bedroom door that Saturday night and committed suicide with an overdose of barbituates.
Much of the current speculation about her death and the new investigation stems from charges made by a one-time coroner's aide who served six months in jail in 1963 for using a credit card taken from a corpse in the county morgue.
The Board of Supervisors has asked the district attorney to look into allegations by Lionel Grandison that he was coerced into signing the death certificate for the glamorous movie star and that Miss Monroe's diary had mysteriously disappeared from the coroner's office.
'These allegations are serious enough to warrant the district attorney's office looking into them,' the board motion said, adding the matter should be referred to the grand jury if the charges were substantiated.
Dr. Thomas Noguchi -- who went on to gain fame as the 'coroner to the stars' -- performed the autopsy on Miss Monroe and concluded she died of a massive overdose in her West Los Angeles home.
A 'suicide team' assigned to the case concluded the star suffered from psychiatric disturbances' and had attempted suicide several times before.
'In our investigation, we have learned that Miss Monroe had often expressed wishes to give up, to withdraw, and even to die,' the official coroner's report said. 'On more than one occasion in the past, when disappointed and depressed, she had made a suicide attempt using sedative drugs.'
But Grandison, private detective Milo Speriglio and others - including several psychics -- contend the true circumstances of her death are more mysterious and sinister.
On the eve of the anniversary, Speriglio called a news conference and offered a $10,000 reward for the missing 'red diary,' which he claimd will detail her affairs with President John Kennedy and his brother, Robert, and prove she was killed by a 'dissident faction of the CIA.'
Speriglio said Miss Monroe was killed because she threatened to divulge secrets revealed to her by Robert Kennedy, including a CIA plot to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, when the then-attorney general refused to marry her.
'I don't have any names,' Speriglio told the packed news conference, 'but it is my belief that a dissident faction of the CIA had her killed.'
A coroner's spokesman dismisses claims that a diary was taken from the office. 'An inventory of personal effects, dated Aug. 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe, reads, 'Cash -- none; No property taken by coroner,'' spokesman Bill Gold said.
'Why would we pick up her diary anyway? No one remembers seeing it,' he said.
Grandison, 42, who signed the death certificate, worked as a coroner's aide whose responsibilities were mostly clerical from February 1961 through September 1962 -- the same month he was arrested for using the stolen card.
'If he didn't want to sign the certificate, anyone else could have just reached over and signed it,' Gold said.
Advocates of the murder plot point to a report by the now-retired chief medical examiner of Suffolk County in New York who reviewed the autopsy report more than 10 years ago, and concluded it raised some unanswered questions.
But Dr. Sidney Weinberg stopped short of speculating the sexy blond was murdered and has tried over the years to dissociate himself from the conspiracy theorists.
'If she took barbituates orally she would have had traces of barbituates in her stomach and gastrointestinal tract,' Dr. Sidney Weinberg said Thursday. 'According to the autopsy report she did not.'
That raised the possibility the drugs were ingested by syringe or suppository, he said, or that laboratory tests were inaccurate.
'I didn't say she was murdered,' Weinberg said. 'There are unanswered questions ... but to go so far as to say categorically she was murdered with the evidence there is is not fair and not correct.'
Deputy District Attorney Mike Carroll said Thursday he is reviewing police and coroner's reports to determine if the allegations made by Grandison and Speriglio warrant a full-scale investigation.
Noguchi, who was accused last spring by county officials of sensationalizing celebrity deaths, is fighting his demotion from chief medical examiner and has refused to comment on the Monroe allegations.
