The Unanswered Questions Surrounding Marilyn Monroe’s Death

The fluorescent lights buzzed softly in the Los Angeles County morgue as Dr.Thomas Noguchi bent over the lifeless body on the steel examination table.

It was 10:30 am on August 5, 1962.

The woman lying before him had been the most photographed and desired figure in the world just hours earlier.

Now, Marilyn Monroe was silent, cold, and marked in ways that would haunt Noguchi for the rest of his life.

He adjusted his magnifying glass, scanning her skin for needle marks, bruises, or any physical evidence that could explain how a 36-year-old woman had died alone in her bedroom.

The air was thick with the smell of formaldehyde and disinfectant.

His assistant, Lionel Granderson, stood beside him with a clipboard, ready to document each observation.

Noguchi paused when he noticed a large, dark purple bruise on her left hip and lower back.

This type of mark did not result from a gentle fall onto a bed after taking too many pills.

He pressed gently on the tissue, noting the deep discoloration.

He instructed Granderson to document this finding, marking it as a large ecchymosis on the left hip and lumbar region.

Yet, even as he dictated the medical terminology, a question formed in his mind that would never receive an answer: how did she get this bruise, and why had no one asked about it?

To understand what Noguchi observed on that examination table, it is essential to grasp who he was and the gravity of the situation he faced.

At just 35 years old in 1962, Noguchi was a young, ambitious deputy medical examiner who had immigrated from Japan.

He had worked his way up through the Los Angeles County Coroner’s system with meticulous precision and had performed hundreds of autopsies.

He was familiar with overdoses and knew what they looked like, but this case was different.

The moment he received the call that Marilyn Monroe had been found dead, Noguchi understood that this autopsy would define his career.

The pressure was immediate.

The Los Angeles Police Department was already at her Brentwood home, reporters gathered outside the morgue, and phones rang incessantly.

Everyone—from studio executives to politicians to the public—wanted a simple answer: accident, suicide, or something else that made sense.

However, nothing about what Noguchi was seeing aligned with those expectations.

Marilyn’s body had arrived early that morning, wrapped in a blue blanket, her blonde hair still styled from the day before.

She had been discovered face down on her bed at 12305 5th Helena Drive at approximately 3:30 am by her housekeeper, Eunice Murray.

The bedroom door had been locked from the inside, and empty pill bottles were scattered on the nightstand.

At first glance, it appeared to be a textbook overdose, except for the unexplained marks on her body.

At 8:00 am, Noguchi began the full external examination before making any incisions, following standard protocol to document everything visible.

He noted her height as 5 feet 5 and a half inches, weight as 117 pounds, hair color as blonde, and eye color as blue.

She wore no jewelry or clothing, as her body had already been cleaned and prepared for examination.

He meticulously moved the magnifying glass across her skin, searching for injection marks.

Although Marilyn had a well-known history of pill use, Noguchi had been informed that some investigators suspected she might have received a lethal injection.

He checked her arms, legs, and even between her toes, but found no needle marks.

This was the first inconsistency.

Next came the bruises.

The large contusion on her left hip was the most prominent, but it was not the only one.

Granderson noted additional discoloration on her arms and small scattered bruises on the backs of her legs, none of which had been mentioned in the initial police reports.

Noguchi photographed each bruise, measured them, and documented their exact locations on the body diagram.

He also noted something unusual: the liver mortis, or post-mortem hypostasis, which showed two different patterns.

There was lividity on the front of her body, consistent with her being found face down, but there was also lividity on her back, suggesting she had been lying on her back for several hours before being moved.

This dual lividity was the second inconsistency that raised red flags for Noguchi.

By 10:00 am, he had completed the external examination and was ready to begin the internal autopsy.

He made the standard Y incision from shoulders to sternum to pubis, carefully peeling back the skin and muscle to expose the organs beneath.

Working methodically, he removed and weighed each organ, looking for signs of disease, trauma, or toxicity.

Marilyn’s heart weighed 300 grams and showed no signs of damage or heart disease.

Her lungs appeared pink and healthy, with no fluid or pneumonia.

Her liver was slightly enlarged, consistent with chronic alcohol use but not diseased.

When he examined her stomach, this is where Noguchi expected to find evidence of drug ingestion.

If Marilyn had swallowed a lethal dose of barbiturates, specifically nebutal and chloral hydrate, as the pill bottles suggested, there should have been residue in her stomach.

Pills typically leave traces, such as partially dissolved capsules or distinctive discoloration in the stomach lining.

However, as he opened her stomach, he found it nearly empty.

There was no pill residue and no capsule fragments.

The stomach lining displayed a slight purple discoloration, but nothing consistent with a massive oral overdose.

He removed the stomach and placed it in a specimen jar for toxicology analysis, doing the same with samples of her blood, liver, kidneys, and intestines.

This was the third inconsistency that left him baffled.

The autopsy lasted nearly four hours.

By 12:30 p.m., Noguchi had completed his examination and began writing his preliminary report.

He was careful and precise, documenting every finding exactly as he observed them.

The bruises, the dual lividity, the empty stomach, and the absence of needle marks were all noted.

However, he was acutely aware of the expectations surrounding him.

The toxicology results would take several days to return, but based on the scene, the locked door, the pill bottles, and Marilyn’s history of mental health struggles, the working theory was already established: suicide by overdose.

Noguchi’s job was to confirm this narrative.

He wrote in his report that the cause of death was “probable suicide.

” Yet, he also included a note that would be buried in the official documents and largely ignored for decades.

He described the bruise on her hip as superficial and not related to the cause of death, suggesting it might have been accidental, perhaps from bumping into furniture.

Even as he wrote this, he did not fully believe it.

Three days later, the toxicology report arrived.

Alone in his office, Noguchi opened the envelope and read through the results slowly, comparing each number against known lethal thresholds for barbiturates.

The findings were definitive.

Marilyn Monroe’s blood contained 4.

5 mg% of nebutal, a barbiturate sedative, while the lethal dose is generally considered to be around 3 mg%.

Her liver contained 13 mg%, indicating an extremely high concentration that confirmed she had ingested a massive amount of the drug.

Additionally, her blood showed 8 mg% of chloral hydrate, another powerful sedative.

The combination of these drugs was more than sufficient to cause death.

However, the manner of ingestion remained unclear.

If Marilyn had swallowed 40 to 50 nebutal capsules, as the blood levels suggested, there should have been evidence in her stomach.

The fact that her stomach was nearly empty contradicted the physical evidence at the scene.

Some toxicologists later theorized that the drugs might have been absorbed unusually quickly or that she had taken them over a period of hours, allowing her stomach to empty naturally.

But Noguchi was not convinced.

There was another possibility that had not been officially considered.

If the drugs had been administered rectally via an enema, it would explain the high concentrations in her liver and bloodstream without leaving any residue in her stomach.

It would also account for the absence of needle marks.

Rectal administration of barbiturates was a known method in the 1960s, sometimes utilized in medical settings for patients unable to swallow pills.

Noguchi mentioned this possibility in his notes, but it was never investigated further.

On August 17, 1962, the official autopsy report was released to the public.

The cause of death was listed as acute barbiturate poisoning, and the manner was ruled as probable suicide.

The case was closed.

Noguchi returned to his other cases, life in the morgue continued, and Marilyn Monroe was buried.

The world mourned her passing, and the questions surrounding her death faded into Hollywood legend.

Yet, Dr.

Thomas Noguchi never forgot the bruise.

For 20 years, he remained silent about his findings.

He had followed protocol, documented his observations, and signed off on the official conclusion.

However, as time passed and he became one of the most recognized coroners in America—conducting autopsies on notable figures like Robert F.

Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Natalie Wood, and John Belushi—he began to feel the weight of what he had witnessed on that fateful day in August 1962.

In 1982, Noguchi published his memoir titled “Coroner.

” In it, he revisited Marilyn Monroe’s autopsy for the first time in two decades.

No longer a young deputy medical examiner concerned about his career, he had become an established authority willing to express what he had kept silent for so long.

He wrote about the bruise on her left hip, stating plainly that the large bruise was never fully explained.

He emphasized that it was a sign of violence.

These five words—”it is a sign of violence”—changed everything.

Noguchi did not accuse anyone of murder or point fingers at specific individuals or conspiracies.

Instead, he stated a medical fact that had been buried in the official report.

The bruise on Marilyn Monroe’s body was consistent with physical trauma.

It was fresh, indicating it had occurred shortly before or around the time of her death, and it had never been adequately explained by the circumstances at the scene.

He also addressed the dual lividity, confirming that the body had been moved after death.

He reiterated that she did not die in the position in which she was found.

Furthermore, he discussed the empty stomach and the high levels of barbiturates found in her blood and liver, alongside the lack of significant residue in her stomach, raising questions about the method of ingestion.

When Noguchi’s book was published, it reignited the controversy surrounding Marilyn’s death.

Journalists began re-examining the case, and investigators who had worked on the scene in 1962 provided new interviews.

Witnesses emerged with conflicting accounts of that night.

Some claimed that powerful men had visited Marilyn in the hours leading up to her death, while others insisted she had been alone and depressed.

However, the physical evidence—the bruises, the lividity, the empty stomach—remained unexplained.

In 1985, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office reviewed the case amid mounting public pressure.

They examined Noguchi’s findings, re-interviewed witnesses, and consulted forensic experts.

Their conclusion, while acknowledging factual discrepancies in the original investigation, stated that there was insufficient evidence to reopen the case or change the official cause of death.

The bruise on Marilyn Monroe’s hip was noted as unexplained but not conclusive of foul play.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Noguchi maintained his stance in interviews, asserting that the autopsy raised legitimate questions.

He stated that he had done his job by documenting what he had seen and that whether that evidence was properly investigated was not his decision.

He emphasized that the marks on her body were real, that they existed, and that they had never been explained.

Lionel Granderson, Noguchi’s assistant during the autopsy, later shared his own account in the late 1990s.

He confirmed the presence of bruises on Marilyn’s arms and legs, the dual lividity, and added a detail that had never been made public: there were marks on her wrists.

These marks were not deep, resembling pressure marks rather than ligature marks, as if someone had grabbed her.

Noguchi had documented these marks, yet they were never mentioned in the official report.

The questions surrounding Marilyn Monroe’s death remain unanswered to this day.

What transpired in her home during the hours leading up to her death? Who, if anyone, moved her body after she died? How did she sustain bruises on her hip, arms, and legs in a locked bedroom? Why was her stomach nearly empty despite the lethal levels of barbiturates in her blood?

What is clear is that on August 5, 1962, Dr.

Thomas Noguchi conducted a thorough autopsy on Marilyn Monroe.

He documented physical findings that did not align with the official narrative of a simple suicide.

He noted bruises that suggested violence, observed lividity patterns that proved the body had been moved, and found toxicology results that contradicted the physical evidence at the scene.

For 20 years, he remained silent, but when he finally spoke, he did so with caution.

He did not accuse or theorize; he simply stated facts—medical facts, physical facts—that do not change with time or political pressure.

Marilyn Monroe died on August 5, 1962, and the official cause of death was ruled as acute barbiturate poisoning with the manner classified as probable suicide.

However, the bruises on her body, particularly the large contusion on her left hip, the smaller marks on her arms and legs, and the dual lividity that indicated she had been moved after death, remain unexplained today, just as they were six decades ago.

As the investigation continues to unfold, the legacy of Marilyn Monroe, intertwined with the mysteries of her death, endures, leaving behind questions that still haunt those who seek the truth.