A retired LAPD detective is calling for a new investigation into the death of Marilyn Monroe, asserting that Hollywood's biggest star was not a suicide but a murder victim, and that the man responsible was Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Mike Rothmiller, the retired detective, says he has uncovered evidence, including a long-lost diary, secret files, phone transcripts, surveillance images, and what he describes as a stunning confession from a Kennedy confidant. That confidant, who remains unnamed, allegedly claimed he had watched RFK give Monroe a poisoned drink that killed her, the Daily Mail reported.
Monroe was found dead in the early hours of August 5, 1962, in her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home. She was 36 years old. She was naked, face down on her bed in a room littered with pill bottles. An autopsy found she died from a probable suicide caused by a barbiturate overdose.
That has been the official story for more than six decades. Rothmiller believes it's wrong.
The evidence that isn't quite evidence
Before anyone gets carried away, it's worth noting what we actually have here: a retired detective's belief, an unnamed confidant's alleged confession, and references to documents that have not been publicly shown, quoted, dated, or otherwise verified in any available reporting on the matter. The diary is described as "long-lost." The files are described as "secret." The confession comes from someone whose name we don't know.
This is not to say Rothmiller is lying. It is to say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and what's been made public so far is a series of extraordinary claims with the proof still behind a curtain.
The Kennedy family's entanglement with Monroe is not new territory. The photo record alone tells part of the story: Monroe appeared alongside both President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy at JFK's 45th birthday celebrations at Madison Square Garden in New York City in May 1962. That was barely three months before her death.
The proximity of power to glamour, and the questions that followed Monroe's death almost immediately, have fueled conspiracy theories for generations. What Rothmiller is doing is trying to move those theories out of the realm of speculation and into something that could justify an official reopening of the case.
Why cold case culture matters
Americans have a complicated relationship with conspiracy theories, and rightly so. Most of them are nonsense. But some of them turn out to be true, and the ones that do almost always involve powerful people who had the means and motive to suppress the truth.
The question worth asking isn't whether Rothmiller's theory is correct. It's whether the original investigation was thorough enough to rule it out. A "probable suicide" determination in 1962, when the victim was intimately connected to the most powerful political family in America, invites scrutiny on its own terms. Law enforcement in that era was not exactly known for its independence from political pressure.
If Rothmiller genuinely possesses the materials he claims, including surveillance images, phone transcripts, and a deathbed confession, then the case for reopening the investigation is straightforward. Let the evidence be examined. Let forensic experts weigh in with modern tools. Either the evidence holds up, or it doesn't.
That's not conspiracy thinking. That's how justice is supposed to work.
The Kennedy mystique and its shield
There is a reason Kennedy-related controversies never fully resolve in the American imagination. The family occupied, and in some ways still occupies, a protected space in the media and in institutional Washington. For decades, questioning the Kennedys carried a social cost in polite circles that questioning other powerful families did not.
That protective instinct has faded somewhat, but it hasn't disappeared. The same media class that will spend months investigating the private conduct of figures they dislike has historically treated Kennedy scandals with a gentleness that borders on complicity. If a retired detective alleged that a Republican attorney general had poisoned a famous actress, the coverage apparatus would look very different.
None of this proves Robert F. Kennedy killed Marilyn Monroe. But the double standard in how such allegations are received, depending on which political dynasty they touch, is real and worth naming.
What comes next
Rothmiller wants a new investigation. Whether he gets one depends entirely on whether the materials he references can be produced, authenticated, and examined by credible investigators. A claim without public evidence is a claim. Evidence without a formal review is a missed opportunity.
Monroe died at 36, alone in a room full of pill bottles. Whatever happened in that Brentwood home in 1962, she deserved a better answer than "probable." If the evidence exists to provide one, the least we owe her is to look.
