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Speaker 2: You are now listening to true Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them. Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker dck every
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Speaker 4: Good Evening, Bobby called, He's coming to California. He wants
Speaker 4: to see me. Drawing on secret police files Marilyn Monroe's
Speaker 4: private diary and never before published firsthand testimony, this book
Speaker 4: proved that Robert Kennedy was directly responsible for her death.
Speaker 4: It details the legendary star's tumultuous personal involvement with him
Speaker 4: and his brother, President John Kennedy, and how they sought
Speaker 4: to silence her. The new evidence and testimony is provided
Speaker 4: by Mike Rothmeller, who, as a detective of the Organized
Speaker 4: Crime Intelligent Division o CID of the LAPD, had direct
Speaker 4: personal access to hundreds of secret la PD files on
Speaker 4: exactly what happened at Marilyn Monroe's California home on August fifth,
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty two. With his training and investigator's knowledge, Rothmeller
Speaker 4: used that secret information to get to the heart of
Speaker 4: the matter to the people who were there the Knight
Speaker 4: Maryland died, two of whom played major roles in the
Speaker 4: cover up and the wider conspiracy to protect the Kennedys
Speaker 4: at all costs. There'll be those with doubts, but to them,
Speaker 4: the law man who directed an international intelligence operations targeting
Speaker 4: organized crime, says the printed, forensic and oral evidence are
Speaker 4: totally convincing. He insists, if I presented my evidence in
Speaker 4: any court of law, I'd get a conviction. The book
Speaker 4: we're featuring this evening is Bombshell, The Night Bobby Kennedy
Speaker 4: killed Marilyn Monroe, with my special guest, historian, author, and
Speaker 4: former detective Mike Rothmeller. Welcome back to the program, and
Speaker 4: thank you so much for this interview. Mike roth Miller.
Speaker 5: Good evening, it's pleasure to be here.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for this incredible opportunity to speak
Speaker 4: to you about Bombshell. Let's start, as you do in
Speaker 4: this book and give us a background on you join
Speaker 4: the LAPDLA Los Angeles Police Department in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 4: Tell us how you came to be involved with the OCID,
Speaker 4: the Organized Crime Intelligence Division.
Speaker 5: Sure, as you mentioned, I entered the police academy in
Speaker 5: seventy two, and then I worked patrol for oh maybe
Speaker 5: about three years. I became a patrol training officer and
Speaker 5: I moved to a new division and I entered VICE
Speaker 5: undercover for eighteen months. And during Vice we worked Hollywood,
Speaker 5: which was very strange vice activity there in other parts
Speaker 5: of the city. And when I was working Vice, two
Speaker 5: guys from OCID, two detectives, came out and started talking
Speaker 5: to us, and quite frankly, I didn't know what OCID did.
Speaker 5: I know what it said in the police manual says
Speaker 5: they investigate organized crime, that was it, But what they
Speaker 5: really did, I had no idea. And so we were
Speaker 5: talking one day and I happened to arrest the guy
Speaker 5: who had a just a book making warn out for
Speaker 5: his arrest. And as it turned out when I started
Speaker 5: interrogating him, he was one of the shooters in a
Speaker 5: contract killing, and for some reason he decided to lay
Speaker 5: this out and it was an organized crime killing on
Speaker 5: the Pasadena Freeway. What happened there was a woman involved
Speaker 5: in the car that he was driving, a guy with
Speaker 5: the shotgun in the backseat, and they pull him next
Speaker 5: to this car. He fires out the window, shoots the
Speaker 5: guy and heads the shotgun and kills him. And the
Speaker 5: little side note on that the guy who actually did
Speaker 5: the shooting was the Maytag repair man in that city
Speaker 5: where I was at. During the day, he would repair
Speaker 5: horses and dryers, and that night he was carrying out
Speaker 5: contract killing. So anyway, this guy lays it all out,
Speaker 5: and we had some other people that arrest them for
Speaker 5: murder and so forth. And I had taken the detective
Speaker 5: exam and very high in so I knew within a
Speaker 5: month or two I was going to be promoted. And
Speaker 5: they told me. They said, hey, there's an opening in
Speaker 5: OCID coming up. Why don't you apply? I said, sure,
Speaker 5: why not otherwise they assigned you somewhere And I went
Speaker 5: down took the interview with the captain and the lieutenants,
Speaker 5: and there was roughly one hundred guys applied for it,
Speaker 5: and I was the youngest by age, and I hadn't
Speaker 5: been promoted to detective yet more. The rest of them
Speaker 5: were all detectives that had been for years, and for
Speaker 5: some reason the captain selected me. I went into CID
Speaker 5: and that's when I got my first taste of what
Speaker 5: really was going on within that division, and I started
Speaker 5: going through the files, the file cabinets, and he remember,
Speaker 5: there's these huge file cabinets with index cards because we
Speaker 5: didn't have computers, and there are probably a good forty
Speaker 5: to fifty thousand cards, and they're different people. They're index cards,
Speaker 5: which meant all of them had either one or hundreds
Speaker 5: or thousands of intelligence reports written on them, and each
Speaker 5: card is linked to other ones, their associates, relatives, or
Speaker 5: whatever it may be. So when I was going through,
Speaker 5: they came across a lot of politicians, and I thought
Speaker 5: that was rather interesting, including the mayor at the time
Speaker 5: of Los Angeles, who was a former LA cop. And
Speaker 5: I looked at it, there's nothing criminal. It was just
Speaker 5: surveillance of him, who he met with and so forth.
Speaker 5: So I started jumping through the files and I found
Speaker 5: came across the Kennedy's John Kennedy primarily I looked at first,
Speaker 5: and it was massive, the dossier they had on him,
Speaker 5: and his was linked to Robert Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe,
Speaker 5: and also Peter Lawford among some organized crime people. I
Speaker 5: started pulling those files out of curiosity and I started
Speaker 5: reading them, and as I was going through these files,
Speaker 5: I started realizing that, wait a minute, some of this
Speaker 5: stuff regard that I've heard in the past regarding Marilyn
Speaker 5: Monroe is not true. I know what the official story was,
Speaker 5: but these files were telling me something completely different. And
Speaker 5: the intelligence files are always accurate because there's no spin
Speaker 5: placed on him. So I continued reading those files over
Speaker 5: a period of months and maybe years on and off,
Speaker 5: and I started finding a file on a guy named
Speaker 5: Fred Otash, and Fred Otash was the person who placed
Speaker 5: the wire taps on Maryland's house and on Peter Lawford's house.
Speaker 5: He also planted bugs in their house listening devices, and
Speaker 5: I started reading about that, and I saw some of
Speaker 5: the manscripts of these conversations Peter Lawford was having with
Speaker 5: Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe and so forth.
Speaker 5: And I looked up Fred and he was still around.
Speaker 5: He was in Los Angeles, and so I got in
Speaker 5: contact with him, and over a period of time I
Speaker 5: developed him as an informant. And the reason I did
Speaker 5: that because he was operating. One day he was acting
Speaker 5: as a criminal, white collar crime. The next day he wasn't.
Speaker 5: And so the people he ran with in the criminal
Speaker 5: world were the ones I was interested in. So he
Speaker 5: was an ideal person, half as an informant. And I
Speaker 5: started talking to Fred, and finally one day we got
Speaker 5: together and I confronted him on this. I started quizzing
Speaker 5: him about the nineteen sixties yearly sixties, because that's when
Speaker 5: he was very active in doing this, and he was
Speaker 5: very accurate. His memory hadn't failed. He was detailed. But
Speaker 5: I also caught him in a couple of direct lies.
Speaker 5: When I called him on it, he admitted that he
Speaker 5: was bsing me, and so then he started telling the truth.
Speaker 5: So as this conversation went on and over the months,
Speaker 5: I said, okay, Fred, who hired you to place these
Speaker 5: wiretaps and bugs? Starting in Peter Lawford's I said, what
Speaker 5: happened there? Who hired you? He said, well, when I
Speaker 5: planted a bug in his office in his home office.
Speaker 5: He said that was Peter asked me to do that.
Speaker 5: And I said, well why, He says, well, because Peter's
Speaker 5: holding meetings in there, in negotiations on whatever. And he
Speaker 5: said Peter would have the conversation and he would excuse himself,
Speaker 5: go into the next room, then listen in to what
Speaker 5: was being said. I said, okay, that makes sense. A
Speaker 5: lot of business people have done that. And I said, okay, now,
Speaker 5: how about the wiretap on this phone? He says, Well,
Speaker 5: he says, when I was there installing the the bugs
Speaker 5: in his house, Fred being Fred, he said, I installed
Speaker 5: a wiretap on his phone for his personal use. Well,
Speaker 5: Fred was supplying loads of information to the scandal sheets
Speaker 5: then in Los Angeles and other places, the inside information
Speaker 5: on movie stars and that stuff. So he did that
Speaker 5: so he could sell that information. And he said as
Speaker 5: time went by, not a lot of time, a short
Speaker 5: period of time, he said he was contacted by the
Speaker 5: CIA and they asked for the information that he was
Speaker 5: receiving on the wiretaps and bugs. And he said, also
Speaker 5: Jimmy Hoffer's agent came to him, same thing. They won.
Speaker 5: So he says, over period of the months, he was
Speaker 5: being paid by Jimmy Hoffa, the CIA, the FBI, and
Speaker 5: LAPD Organized Crime Unit to give him that information that
Speaker 5: he was gathering on wiretaps and so forth. So he did.
Speaker 5: But he said, finally what happened was the haffa in
Speaker 5: the CIA. They wanted a lot of stuff on Kennedy
Speaker 5: on the Kennedy Brothers. So he installed the wire tap
Speaker 5: in Maryland's house and the bug in her house. And
Speaker 5: I asked him, how did you do that? How did
Speaker 5: you get into her house to do this? And he said, well,
Speaker 5: he had a couple of guys from the phone company
Speaker 5: on his payroll. They just cut off the telephone service
Speaker 5: to Maryland's house. Then they went over there and said,
Speaker 5: we know you don't have telephone service. We're here to
Speaker 5: repair it. And Maryland wasn't there, so the housekeeper said, great,
Speaker 5: come on and do it. So when they did that,
Speaker 5: they installed the wire tap and they installed the bugs
Speaker 5: in the house. So he was dishing out this information
Speaker 5: to the various agencies. He said he gave haff A
Speaker 5: very little because Haffa was a hothead and he was
Speaker 5: afraid he would go public and then he would find
Speaker 5: himself in a bind. That the main players that he
Speaker 5: gave to were the other agencies of the FBIICI. But
Speaker 5: he said he swore he gave everything to OCID, which
Speaker 5: I didn't believe. But I asked him why and he said, well,
Speaker 5: because you guys are the hometown team. He lived in
Speaker 5: la and he says, I know what you guys can
Speaker 5: do to me, and he says, I don't want any
Speaker 5: trouble from you. So he says, I gave all my
Speaker 5: information to OCID. So that's how it started coming about.
Speaker 5: And I kept digging more and more through the LAPD files.
Speaker 5: I started finding more about Fred and his wiretapping and
Speaker 5: information the transcripts. And then what was really curious is
Speaker 5: that as I dug it deeper in the files, I
Speaker 5: came across a copy of her diary, which was interesting
Speaker 5: because I always thought, as I had heard from everybody else,
Speaker 5: it was lost, it was gone, nobody knows what happened
Speaker 5: to it. Well, LAPD Intelligence had a copy of it,
Speaker 5: and it was it was title Maror Moro's Diary. And
Speaker 5: I just start flipping through it. It was a xerox
Speaker 5: copy of it, I should say, And I start flipping
Speaker 5: through it and yeah, okay, I see this is her.
Speaker 5: She's talking about people she knew. But what I did
Speaker 5: at the time is when I went through it, if
Speaker 5: she made some comment about somebody I didn't know, I've
Speaker 5: never heard the name. She just said, like, I'm going
Speaker 5: over to Larry's house for dinner. So and so I
Speaker 5: has nice roses something like that. I didn't pay attention
Speaker 5: to because I didn't know what she's talking about. But
Speaker 5: when she came to the point of talking about Peter Lawford,
Speaker 5: the Kennedys, mainly Jack and Robert, I noticed that, and
Speaker 5: I knew who she was talking about, because she one
Speaker 5: time said the President, and she said Jack and John
Speaker 5: blah blah blah and Robert, and I took notes of
Speaker 5: those right at the time. I just started making copies
Speaker 5: writing down what she's saying. I've had those all these years,
Speaker 5: and those appear in the book. But she got into
Speaker 5: talking about her feelings regarding the President and Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 5: She talks about having sex with the President and how
Speaker 5: he gave her appeal one time, which was probably a
Speaker 5: sedative of some type. But she just goes on talking
Speaker 5: about the type of sex she liked and she wasn't
Speaker 5: that thrilled about it, but she did it anyway. So
Speaker 5: the diary gets into that and talked about that, which
Speaker 5: is all in the book. And then she talked about
Speaker 5: her relationship with Robert Kennedy, and which once again all
Speaker 5: her comments are in the book, but she it appears
Speaker 5: that she actually fell in love with Robert Kennedy, and
Speaker 5: she did think, apparently that he was going to leave
Speaker 5: his wife and they were going to get together, which
Speaker 5: never would have happened. But as time went by, when JFK,
Speaker 5: because I read the intelligence auction, when he was caught
Speaker 5: on a wiretap by the FEDS, the FBI talking to
Speaker 5: a few mob people and also talking to Maryland, Hoover
Speaker 5: went to Robert, or had Robert come to him, I
Speaker 5: should say, and said, here, listen to these it's your
Speaker 5: brother talking to so and so. We know what he's doing,
Speaker 5: and you know, I just want to let you know.
Speaker 5: And so that was Hoover blackmailing JFK with the intelligence
Speaker 5: indications that Robert told his brother, and that's when he
Speaker 5: broke off the relationship with Maryland, and she was upset.
Speaker 5: But also what happens, Robert was kind of the middleman
Speaker 5: there to smooth things over, to keep her calm, keep
Speaker 5: her happy, and he started having an affair with her.
Speaker 5: Then as time went by, she started calling DJ where
Speaker 5: Robert was the attorney general. She started calling the White
Speaker 5: House and nobody was returning her calls, and she was
Speaker 5: getting pissed off. And that is verified by what Fred
Speaker 5: Otash knew from his recordings and from what it basically
Speaker 5: says in her diary and the other intelligence documents, and
Speaker 5: so Peter Lawford was then called to go over and
Speaker 5: try to calm Marylynd down. This was a couple of
Speaker 5: weeks before her death, and he was trying his best,
Speaker 5: but she wasn't having any of it, and she said, no,
Speaker 5: I want them, you know, talk to me. I don't
Speaker 5: like being treated like a basically a whore and being
Speaker 5: tossed around. And so Peter found himself in a difficult position.
Speaker 5: He was trying to be middleman and suite of both
Speaker 5: sides and it wasn't working. So she did, because I
Speaker 5: read the transcript she did threatened to go public with
Speaker 5: the information of her having a interfere with John Kennedy
Speaker 5: and Robert Kennedy and Peter. She told Peter that, and
Speaker 5: Peter immediately got a hold of them and said, you know, hey,
Speaker 5: she's on the verge of going public and blowing up,
Speaker 5: and she wants to talk to Robert and he won't
Speaker 5: talk to her. And so finally Peter talked him into
Speaker 5: coming over and seeing her. And in her diary she
Speaker 5: mentions that that Bobby was coming over and so they
Speaker 5: he flies in, Robert flies in, Peter picks him up
Speaker 5: the airport, he flew into private plane and takes him
Speaker 5: to his house. At his house, he has a telephone
Speaker 5: call from JFK. Robert's talking to Jeff K from Peter's house.
Speaker 5: Then they talked with Marilyn a couple of times. Peter does.
Speaker 5: They go up there to her house that afternoon. He says,
Speaker 5: they try to make everything amenable, but she wasn't going
Speaker 5: for it, and so they leave and he says, he
Speaker 5: speaks to her a couple more times, and your telephone,
Speaker 5: Peter does, and she agrees to let them come up
Speaker 5: that night. So they go up that night and they're
Speaker 5: meeting with her again and I said, well, who is
Speaker 5: at the house And he says, there's nobody there, just Marilyn,
Speaker 5: Peter and Robert Kennedy. And I said, okay, what happened?
Speaker 5: So he goes into his first version. Well, pardon me,
Speaker 5: let me back up. I'm got ahead of myself. I
Speaker 5: met Peter Lawford at the Playboy Mansion prior to this
Speaker 5: meeting with him. I went up there on a weekend
Speaker 5: because we had access to the Playboy Mansion working intelligence,
Speaker 5: and I took my wife and a couple of friends
Speaker 5: to have a tour. In this room, I see this
Speaker 5: haggard old guy watching the TV set and I thought
Speaker 5: it was kind of strange, and he looked at me.
Speaker 5: Then I realized who it was as Peter Lawfer. He
Speaker 5: looked pretty haggard, and he was either a combination drugs
Speaker 5: and alcohol, but he was just pretty much out of it.
Speaker 5: I talked to him briefly for a second. He just
Speaker 5: kind of nodded. I shoved a business card of mine
Speaker 5: in his shirt pocket. My wife and the friends come over. Oh, hello,
Speaker 5: mis loved high. He just kind of nods, and then
Speaker 5: we go about our business. Well, when I'm at the
Speaker 5: office the next time, i'd get a call from him,
Speaker 5: and he didn't remember meeting me, and he just said, hey,
Speaker 5: I found this card in my pocket and I don't
Speaker 5: know what it's for or why I got it. And
Speaker 5: I started talking to him about it, said, well, I
Speaker 5: mentioned the Floodboard Mansion so forth, and I would like
Speaker 5: to talk to you about some historic events that happened
Speaker 5: to Hollywood during the late fifties and sixties. And he
Speaker 5: says okay, and then he goes are you with the CIA,
Speaker 5: which is a very strange question, and I say no,
Speaker 5: I work LAPED Intelligence and he goes okay, and he says, oh,
Speaker 5: what do you want to talk about? And I said, well,
Speaker 5: just some old historic stuff, you know, just get together
Speaker 5: and chat because I didn't want to tell him what
Speaker 5: it was over the phone. And then he says again,
Speaker 5: he says, are you sure you're not the CIA? And
Speaker 5: I said, yes, I am not the CIA. So it
Speaker 5: was rather strange that he was asking me if I
Speaker 5: was a CIA. But we agreed to meet up in
Speaker 5: a park the following day, not far from the Playboy mansion.
Speaker 5: I go up there. I'm waiting and waiting. About an
Speaker 5: hour later, he hasn't shown. I'm ready to leave. Then
Speaker 5: I finally spotted walking in the park. I go over
Speaker 5: and talk to him and he doesn't remember me seeing me,
Speaker 5: and we sat down on the bench and he said
Speaker 5: what do you want and I said, well, I just
Speaker 5: want to talk to you about the past. So I
Speaker 5: started quizzing him, which you always do on people like that,
Speaker 5: about their memory. And I started quizzing him about the fifties,
Speaker 5: late fifties and sixties Hollywood and what he was doing
Speaker 5: and so forth with the Kennedys. And he was accurate,
Speaker 5: and he wasn't drunk, and he wasn't under influence of
Speaker 5: drugs or anything at the time, and he was very
Speaker 5: accurate and detailed. And so I said, Okay, I just
Speaker 5: want you to clear up something regarding Marilyn Monroe's death
Speaker 5: and that I can just see. He's stiffened up instantly,
Speaker 5: and he says what And I said, well, I just
Speaker 5: want to hear your story. So he proceeded to tell
Speaker 5: me the story that was scripted for him with LAPD's
Speaker 5: assistance LPED Intelligence way back when. And I knew that
Speaker 5: was BS. And so I told him, said that I
Speaker 5: just left this, Peter, that's not true. That's a lie
Speaker 5: that was given you by LP And he got a
Speaker 5: little upset about that, and he stood up and he
Speaker 5: was ready to leave, and I stood up, And at
Speaker 5: that point I knew I had to move it from
Speaker 5: a simple interview to a hostile interrogation, which is a
Speaker 5: difference in the way they're handled and what you do.
Speaker 5: So I got up and I started getting on and
Speaker 5: getting in his face and basically telling us to no, no,
Speaker 5: you're going to tell me what happened. We're really happy
Speaker 5: you're not going to give me that line of so
Speaker 5: and so that you've been given for years. I said,
Speaker 5: I want to know what happened. And then I got
Speaker 5: into it. I said, you know, Bobby's dead, Jack is dead.
Speaker 5: Maryland said, everybody's dead, but you who knew anything about it?
Speaker 5: And I said, I just want you to clear it up.
Speaker 5: And I'm not coming after you. Nobody's coming after you.
Speaker 5: I said, but but you asked me a lot about
Speaker 5: the CIA and so forth. And I said, you know,
Speaker 5: there are a lot of people who would want to
Speaker 5: know you would be telling me, and just meeting with
Speaker 5: me is going to put some fear into them about
Speaker 5: what you may have said. So I said, this is
Speaker 5: your chance. Tell me now what happened, or forget it.
Speaker 5: You know, you may find yourself in a position you
Speaker 5: don't want to be. So he just he looked at
Speaker 5: me and then he just he sat down on the
Speaker 5: bench and I sat down next to him again, and
Speaker 5: he just cradled his hands, I mean, his face in
Speaker 5: his hands, and he is just quiet, and he's just said,
Speaker 5: what do you want to know? And I just said,
Speaker 5: tell me the truth of what happened. So at that
Speaker 5: stage he opened up and it just started flowing out.
Speaker 5: And it was rather interesting because in the past, when
Speaker 5: I interrogated people that were carrying a huge burden of guilt,
Speaker 5: when they start relieving it unloading that you can see
Speaker 5: it in them, and it's just it's really an interesting
Speaker 5: transformations to watch. So he just started unloading unloading, and
Speaker 5: I knew he was telling me the truth because I
Speaker 5: read all the intelligence funded and so he was just
Speaker 5: going through it what happened and what went on in
Speaker 5: the house, And I said, okay, well, now you're at
Speaker 5: the house that night, what happened? He says, well, I'm
Speaker 5: just going to paraphrase everything, making sure that what's in
Speaker 5: the book, But is that Robert and Marylyn gotten a huge,
Speaker 5: huge argument and to the point where she he thought
Speaker 5: she was going to slap him. Robert pushed her down
Speaker 5: onto the ground. They're screaming at each other, so he
Speaker 5: says he had to break them up. He pulled Robert
Speaker 5: back and Marilyn got up and they're just a screaming
Speaker 5: contest going on. So he says he kind of calmed
Speaker 5: Marylynd down some. Then he and Robert start searching the
Speaker 5: house and going into the bedroom and so forth, and
Speaker 5: pulling out trust her drawers, looking through there, and he says,
Speaker 5: when Robert is doing the druseph George, Maryland came up
Speaker 5: and grabbed him, screaming at him. He pushed her down
Speaker 5: again on the floor and then grabbed her by the wrist,
Speaker 5: and they were just a true screaming match, and so
Speaker 5: he was definitely afraid. Peter was. He said that it
Speaker 5: was warm, the windows and the house were open. He
Speaker 5: was afraid the neighbors were going to hear the screaming
Speaker 5: the argument and called the police. He was definitely afraid
Speaker 5: of that. So he says, this continued, and finally he
Speaker 5: was able to shuttle Maryland into the living room and
Speaker 5: sat her down on the sofa. He sat next to her,
Speaker 5: and he's holding her and he's just talking, trying to
Speaker 5: calm the situation down. Robert keeps quizzing her, asking her
Speaker 5: some questions, which once again that's all in the book.
Speaker 5: But anyway, Robert then leaves the room and he goes
Speaker 5: into the kitchen and Peter waits a few minutes. He
Speaker 5: doesn't come back. He said it seemed a few minutes
Speaker 5: and he walks in to see what he's doing, and
Speaker 5: he said, he walks in and he's got a what
Speaker 5: appeared to be a it was a clear glass goblet
Speaker 5: thing with clear water in it, and he's got a
Speaker 5: spoon in it and he's steering it, stirring it. And
Speaker 5: so I said, said, well, what color was the water?
Speaker 5: He said, he just was clear, but he had a
Speaker 5: spoon in there. And I said, okay, you don't put
Speaker 5: a spoon in water, you know, and stir it. And
Speaker 5: so I said, what did he put in? And he says, well,
Speaker 5: I don't know, he says, but I think it was
Speaker 5: I found it was a sedative of something, and he
Speaker 5: said okay, And then what happened, he said, Well, then
Speaker 5: they they walked back into the living room and Marylyn
Speaker 5: still on the sofa crying, and he offers her, says, here,
Speaker 5: take a drink or feel better. She didn't want it,
Speaker 5: and then Peter was coaxing, here's no, I'll go ahead drink.
Speaker 5: He'll feel better if you're better. And he thought it
Speaker 5: was just a perhaps a simple sedative that helped calm
Speaker 5: her down, and so she sifted. She complained to the taste.
Speaker 5: They pushed her a little bit more. She drank more
Speaker 5: and they just kept talking, and he says Robert walked
Speaker 5: back into the kitchen with the glass. He said, then
Speaker 5: he continued searching the house. He said, then he went
Speaker 5: followed Robert once again left Marylyn on the sofa, and
Speaker 5: he says they were gone. He says, he said he
Speaker 5: wasn't sure how long they were gone searching part of
Speaker 5: the house, but he said when they came back in,
Speaker 5: Marilyn was still on the sofa with her head tilted back,
Speaker 5: and she looked like she was sleeping or just out
Speaker 5: of it because the drugs. Says that they continued looking
Speaker 5: around them and they came were coming back in, they
Speaker 5: heard a knock at the door, and Peter said he
Speaker 5: pretty much panicked at that stage because he just felt
Speaker 5: that it had to be the police coming or a
Speaker 5: neighbor coming to see what's going on. And he said,
Speaker 5: before he said, nobody said anything. He said, Robert didn't
Speaker 5: say anything, Peter and anything. But Peter said, I walk
Speaker 5: from her. I looked at her, and she was waxing
Speaker 5: looking and most people, if you've seen him right after
Speaker 5: they die, that's pretty much how they look. And I said, well,
Speaker 5: she breathing. I don't think so, I said, did you
Speaker 5: think they she was dead? He says yeah, and so
Speaker 5: they Bobby just says we got to go, takes him
Speaker 5: by the arm, leads to the front door, and he said, well,
Speaker 5: what about Maryland, you know? And he go, let's go.
Speaker 5: They opened the door and he says, he looks and
Speaker 5: there's two men standing there in plain clothes, and he says,
Speaker 5: nobody said a word. He said, they didn't say anything.
Speaker 5: We didn't, he says. Bobby didn't say anything, he says,
Speaker 5: and they just stepped back and we walked out, and
Speaker 5: Bobby said we got to go, and went to the
Speaker 5: car and he said, I look back and saw these
Speaker 5: guys enter the house and close the door. So I said, well,
Speaker 5: do you know who they were? And he said no,
Speaker 5: not really And I said have I don't know their names?
Speaker 5: And I said, have you ever seen either one of
Speaker 5: them before? He says, yeah, the one guy I've seen before.
Speaker 5: And I said in what context? He says, well, before
Speaker 5: John Kennedy became president and before Robert was in and
Speaker 5: he offically says this guy was a friend of theirs.
Speaker 5: And he says, I know he's a cop. He says,
Speaker 5: And what happened is the two brothers are individually, they'd
Speaker 5: come out to LA and this guy would act as
Speaker 5: their chauffeur and bodyguard and pure pure women form and
Speaker 5: so forth. And at that point it clicked in my
Speaker 5: head who the person was. And so I said, you've
Speaker 5: seen him before. I said, would you recognize the name
Speaker 5: if you heard it? And he said, I don't know.
Speaker 5: And I said, was the guy's name? Last name? Hamilton?
Speaker 5: He goes, that's it, that's the guy. Well, Hamilton was
Speaker 5: the captain of the Intelligence Division and a very longtime
Speaker 5: friend of Robert and Jack Kennedy, and so he's the
Speaker 5: one that went into the house. Well, then as Peters
Speaker 5: taking him to the airport, they were stopped by Beverly
Speaker 5: Hills cop and for speeding. And he went on and
Speaker 5: Robert went back up flew secretly back at the Central
Speaker 5: California and I asked him, I said, well, why did
Speaker 5: you ever hear why there was a delay in calling
Speaker 5: the police when Marilyn died? And he said, well, you
Speaker 5: know I heard stories internally. I said, what he says, Well,
Speaker 5: to give him time to get out of LA, meaning Robert,
Speaker 5: I said, so basically to build an alibi. He goes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: I asked him also if he thought that they meaning
Speaker 5: that Kennedys wanted her dead, and he just basically nodded,
Speaker 5: you know, affirming that he did. But he also said
Speaker 5: he said he felt to me it was often he
Speaker 5: felt terrible about this, and he said, but they didn't
Speaker 5: have to do it. They didn't have to do it,
Speaker 5: and which they didn't have to do it. There are
Speaker 5: other ways would have been available to handle her at
Speaker 5: the time. But then was interesting in ninety three, after
Speaker 5: my first book. It was about ninety three, if my
Speaker 5: first book was out La Secret Police, I'd get a
Speaker 5: call from a guy named Jack Clemens and I said, okay,
Speaker 5: who are you Jack? You know, I don't know. I
Speaker 5: didn't know him. And he said, well, you know, I
Speaker 5: was LPD blah blah blah a certain amount of time.
Speaker 5: He says, I was the first guy, first LPD cop
Speaker 5: at Marylynd's home the night she died. He was to
Speaker 5: watch command. He took the call and he went up
Speaker 5: there and I said, okay, okay, that's fine. What then
Speaker 5: and he said, well, I want to get together with
Speaker 5: you and tell you what happened. Okay. You know, I
Speaker 5: was already out of law enforcement by that time. I
Speaker 5: had already been doing a television show and everything. And
Speaker 5: I got together with them and I said, well, what
Speaker 5: do you want to tell me? So he says, well,
Speaker 5: you know, there was a huge cover and they tried
Speaker 5: to get me involved in it. And I knew there
Speaker 5: was a cover up obviously, and I said, okay, well
Speaker 5: tell me your story. And he went on and said, well,
Speaker 5: the night I got there, he said everything was being staged.
Speaker 5: And he said it was staged before I got there.
Speaker 5: And he says, but I couldn't prove it at that time.
Speaker 5: But he said, about a week later, he's at the
Speaker 5: station where's working, and he said, these two guys come
Speaker 5: in and he says, they identify themself from OCID, and
Speaker 5: he said, talk to me, and they said, here, we
Speaker 5: want you to sign. This report is called a fifteen seven. Basically,
Speaker 5: he would write out what he saw and did that
Speaker 5: night and turn it in and he read it and
Speaker 5: he said, I didn't write this, and he said, he
Speaker 5: write it further. He says, and this didn't happen this way,
Speaker 5: this is BS. I'm not going to sign this. He
Speaker 5: said no, you're going to sign it, and he said no,
Speaker 5: I'm not. So then at that stage he said, the
Speaker 5: one guy pulls out his ID and guess who it is,
Speaker 5: Captain Hamilton warning him to sign it, and he said,
Speaker 5: I'm not going to sign it. I don't care who
Speaker 5: you are. He said, chief of police can make me
Speaker 5: sign this. So he says, they move on to the
Speaker 5: next of He said, okay, well, what we want you
Speaker 5: to do is look at these photographs and what they
Speaker 5: were death seeing photographs of the house and so forth,
Speaker 5: but primarily the ones in Maryland bed and he said,
Speaker 5: we want you to sign Well, that's completely out of
Speaker 5: LAPD protocol. When there's a photograph of a crime scene,
Speaker 5: the photographer has their name on it, not some cop
Speaker 5: that was there. And he's looking at these photographs, eight
Speaker 5: by ten black and whites, and one he says, he
Speaker 5: there's the second one they shown him. They showed Marylyn
Speaker 5: in bed and most people have seen them. She's laying
Speaker 5: in bed holding a telephone receiver. And he says, the
Speaker 5: next one they showed me. It's the same picture, but
Speaker 5: she doesn't have the telephone receiver in her hand. Now
Speaker 5: you look at that and as a COMPI instantly, no,
Speaker 5: wait a minute, they're altering evidence their staginess. But for
Speaker 5: what reason he didn't know at the time. He refused
Speaker 5: the initials. He says, no, I'm not going to do it,
Speaker 5: forget it. So that was pretty much his death meal,
Speaker 5: and they ran him out of the PD a short
Speaker 5: time later. And the other thing that was interesting is
Speaker 5: in at the same time, about ninety three and nine before,
Speaker 5: I was doing a radio talk show about a book,
Speaker 5: and two of the guys that are on the line
Speaker 5: with me is Sam Yorty, who was the mayor at
Speaker 5: the time, and Tom Redden, who was a deputy chief
Speaker 5: when she died and he later became chief of police.
Speaker 5: So we're just we're chatting about it. And both of
Speaker 5: them asked me when we went to a commercial, I said,
Speaker 5: can I call you? I want to talk to you. Fine,
Speaker 5: I gave my number, read and pardon me. Yordy calls
Speaker 5: me the next day and I said, yeah, well, what
Speaker 5: do you want to talk about? And he says, well,
Speaker 5: I want to know about Merri Monroe, what the truth
Speaker 5: is because he says Parker who was the chief. Then
Speaker 5: he says he just lied to me on so many things,
Speaker 5: and I said, okay, So I tell him what I
Speaker 5: knew and he goes okay, And I said, now do
Speaker 5: you want to know what was in your file? Because
Speaker 5: he had a massive intelligence file. Most guy he maintained
Speaker 5: on him. And I said, you want to know what's
Speaker 5: in your Fox says no, he didn't want to hear it.
Speaker 5: And so that was the end of our conversation. Tom
Speaker 5: Wrenn calls me several days later and we're talking and
Speaker 5: he says, same question. He says, would you please tell
Speaker 5: me what really happened with Marilyn Monbro And I go what?
Speaker 5: And I said, you were the chief of police. You're
Speaker 5: the deputy chief when this happened. You were in Parker's
Speaker 5: offices we were talking about. He says, well, here's what happened.
Speaker 5: He says, yeah, I was a deputy chief. And he
Speaker 5: says when Captain Hamilton came in, because Hamilton also went
Speaker 5: to the phone company and pulled all of the records
Speaker 5: on Merrily Unroll's telephone calls, he brought him in, gave
Speaker 5: him to Chief Parker, and Redden was in Parker's office
Speaker 5: when he delivered those and they all went over him.
Speaker 5: He says, then Parker took those telephone polls, put him
Speaker 5: in his personal and that was the end of it,
Speaker 5: you know. He said that we just didn't talk about
Speaker 5: it anymore. So Redten ends up down the line becoming
Speaker 5: chief of police, and he tells me, he says, the
Speaker 5: first thing I did the first day I was chief,
Speaker 5: I got into the office is I called OCID, And
Speaker 5: he says the guy who answered, he says, I think
Speaker 5: he was a lieutenant. I'm not quite sure that I
Speaker 5: don't remember, but he says, I asked him, he said,
Speaker 5: do you guys have any files, intelligence files on Marilyn Monroe,
Speaker 5: Peter Laufer, the Kennedys. And the guy said, well, yes
Speaker 5: we do, Chief, you know, certainly we do. And he says, fine,
Speaker 5: get all those files together, bring them my office this afternoon.
Speaker 5: I want to see him. Sure you got it? Well,
Speaker 5: he says. That afternoon comes and the captain from OCID
Speaker 5: comes in carrying nothing, and he says, I understand you
Speaker 5: wanted to talk about the Kennedy's and Marollan this chief,
Speaker 5: and he says, no, I want to see the files.
Speaker 5: And the character says, we don't have any files on them,
Speaker 5: and Redden says, I knew he was lying, but he
Speaker 5: says the way that OCID had a filing system, which
Speaker 5: I noticed to be a fact. He says, I could
Speaker 5: have went down there and spent months and never found
Speaker 5: anything that I was looking for, right because there was
Speaker 5: a code that we had internally in intelligence. And he said,
Speaker 5: I also knew that the files would be hidden quickly,
Speaker 5: just pull him out, take him out, and put him
Speaker 5: in the trunk of a car, and they don't exist anymore.
Speaker 5: So he says, I knew I was being lied to
Speaker 5: even when I was chief. So he said, that's what
Speaker 5: I want to know from you, what really happened. So
Speaker 5: I laid it out to him, and he said he
Speaker 5: was not surprised by hearing it, all the details and
Speaker 5: so forth.
Speaker 4: So Mike, Yes, yes, michaelus. He says, enough coportunity to
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Speaker 4: we were just talking about this information that you were
Speaker 4: asked by the incredibly the chief of police in LA.
Speaker 4: So continue with what else they do they gained from
Speaker 4: your conversation with you about this case and what you
Speaker 4: knew from being an OCID.
Speaker 5: Sure, well, what I told the chief was what I knew,
Speaker 5: which was basically the truth of what happened. And I
Speaker 5: already heard everything from Jack Clemons and so forth, so
Speaker 5: I just laid out the facts to him what went
Speaker 5: down that night. He knew, as did Parker, and later
Speaker 5: on when I was working at Darryl Gaz's Chief everybody
Speaker 5: knew that Robert Kennedy secretly came to town. And part
Speaker 5: of the reason they knew that is because they had
Speaker 5: him under surveillance when he came to the airport and
Speaker 5: Peter Lawford picked him up. OCID was surveilling them, and
Speaker 5: I saw some surveillance photographs taken that day during daylight
Speaker 5: hours of those two guys together when he was supposed
Speaker 5: to be up in Central California. So it wasn't a
Speaker 5: It wasn't a huge secret within the intelligence guys that
Speaker 5: he was there that day and they went to Maryland's
Speaker 5: house and so forth, and what happened. What is really
Speaker 5: interesting is that, keeping us in context with people have
Speaker 5: to know, is that of the sixty detectives that were
Speaker 5: in there in the organized crime when I was there,
Speaker 5: in the five years, we never made one arrest, not one, wow,
Speaker 5: and for anything. And the reason being we were mandated
Speaker 5: just to gather intelligence. And the reason that was done
Speaker 5: is because if we made an arrest and we went
Speaker 5: to court and there was a subpoena, serve for records
Speaker 5: and so forth, they're going to have a difficult time
Speaker 5: explaining illegal a history of illegal wire taps, black bag jobs,
Speaker 5: break ins, other intimidating sort of things that went on
Speaker 5: with people. And they didn't want that. They just wanted
Speaker 5: the chief, just wanted the intelligence. So that's what was done.
Speaker 5: And also what's very important to understand is that in
Speaker 5: the history of OCID, well it started as a gangster
Speaker 5: squad in nineteen thirty two and it went on changed
Speaker 5: names two times, but I was always doing the same stuff.
Speaker 5: Is that whenever if you want to say a celebrity
Speaker 5: or notable person whoever was died in a bizarre way.
Speaker 5: Mainly look at a homicide in Los Angeles, so southern California.
Speaker 5: Two things that happened, and this happened in Marilyn Monroe.
Speaker 5: It happened with Bugsy Siegel, the mobster. It also handled
Speaker 5: a Robert. They handled the same way with Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 5: And that is the homicide unit, which would been Robert homicide.
Speaker 5: They hand the criminal investigation. They handle going to court,
Speaker 5: testify and all that stuff. Well, while they're doing their
Speaker 5: investigation OCID or the intelligence unit what it was called
Speaker 5: back then, too, is that they do an intelligence investigation.
Speaker 5: Except the difference is too mainfold. One is that they
Speaker 5: don't follow the rules. They just did what they wanted,
Speaker 5: wire tats, break in, so forth, and they never shared
Speaker 5: the information with the homicide guys that are really doing
Speaker 5: the case. The homicide guys never knew what the intelligence
Speaker 5: guys are doing. And so they did that on those
Speaker 5: particular cases, and they did that on Maryland's. And that's
Speaker 5: one of the files that I read was the intelligence
Speaker 5: investigation which basically told a story that was never released.
Speaker 5: And those files still are locked up. They'll never be released.
Speaker 5: If they're still have somebody hasn't destroyed or taken them,
Speaker 5: but under the California Freedom Information Neck you can't get them.
Speaker 5: I tried getting some a few years ago, just not
Speaker 5: on this case, but on cases that I worked where
Speaker 5: I initiated the intelligence operation. I wrote about it in
Speaker 5: all the reports. I closed it and it was done.
Speaker 5: I got a hold of LAPD, I filed with them
Speaker 5: for it, and they just came back and said, no,
Speaker 5: under California lah blah blah blah, those are all considered
Speaker 5: active investigations, so we don't have to disclose anything. And
Speaker 5: it was really kind of humorous because I asked them one.
Speaker 5: I said, well, now the cases on and I named
Speaker 5: off three organized crime guys who were killed in the
Speaker 5: forties and fifties. And when I talked to their guy,
Speaker 5: he said, well who are they? And I told them
Speaker 5: he says, well, no, those are still active investigation. I said,
Speaker 5: the guy has been dead for seven years. How could
Speaker 5: it be an active investigation. Everybody around him, the family,
Speaker 5: they're all dead. Understate, all those are active investigations, so
Speaker 5: we don't release anything. So that's the situation. They conducted
Speaker 5: all these investigations. They did the same with the Black
Speaker 5: Dallia murder. I knew a guy who worked intelligence who
Speaker 5: was on the Black murder case as an intelligence guy,
Speaker 5: and they did things that were so far out of
Speaker 5: the norm and illegal even at the time most people
Speaker 5: would be stunned by it. But they also learned the
Speaker 5: intelligence guys who actually killed the Black value. They knew
Speaker 5: they uncovered that, and they went so far as that
Speaker 5: they kidnapped him for over a week trying to get
Speaker 5: him to confess, but he wouldn't, but they knew it
Speaker 5: was him, and they eventually had a cutting loose. But
Speaker 5: all of that stuff is locked up and we'll never
Speaker 5: see the light of day.
Speaker 4: You talk about the uc ID, and you write in
Speaker 4: this book about the connections and the surveillance on people,
Speaker 4: celebrities like Frank Sinatra, which is crucial to this story,
Speaker 4: as well being a friend of Marilyn Monroe. You say,
Speaker 4: having had sex with Marilyn Monroe and part of this
Speaker 4: rat pack that included Peter Lawford. But it was interesting
Speaker 4: that it supposed to be organized crime, but there was
Speaker 4: much more emphasis on celebrity. But in that emphasis on
Speaker 4: the celebrities that they surveyed, there was always an organized
Speaker 4: crime connection wasn't there.
Speaker 5: In many cases there were, but sometimes they were strets
Speaker 5: like a snatcher. It's no secret today he had some connections,
Speaker 5: but some of the other celebrities, like well, Jack Lemon,
Speaker 5: he was the one there's a huge fought on and
Speaker 5: the reason being is that one day when he was
Speaker 5: he came into LAX, because there was always a squad
Speaker 5: of O CID guys at LAX watching who's coming and
Speaker 5: going on the aircraft, the various planes, and so he
Speaker 5: came in and some people came up to him, you know,
Speaker 5: introduced to say oh hello miss and blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: And what happened there was a pseudo low level mob guy.
Speaker 5: Mob associates say, who is flying to Vegas? And he
Speaker 5: walked out to him and shook hands and that was it.
Speaker 5: Jacquelin didn't know who this guy was and walked away,
Speaker 5: but that was enough to justify putting the Lemon and
Speaker 5: file and completing a full dossie on him and monitoring
Speaker 5: everything you could on him from that day forward. And
Speaker 5: so that's what they did. With politicians. Sometimes that wasn't
Speaker 5: even a connection, a weak connection like that. It was
Speaker 5: just a matter of so and so as mayor, so
Speaker 5: and so as governor. As an example, Garry Brown when
Speaker 5: he was governor the first time in California, I was
Speaker 5: involved with some surveillances when he would come from Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: and he had to remember there are no cell phones.
Speaker 5: They just had a few people have radio phones in
Speaker 5: their cars. He had one as the governor, and there
Speaker 5: was an OCID associate who was more of an informant,
Speaker 5: and he was able to intercept all of Jerry Brown's
Speaker 5: telephone calls when he made it from the car, and
Speaker 5: so he would give those to OCID. Here's what the
Speaker 5: Governor's talking about, who he's talking to, and all this stuff.
Speaker 5: Oc I didn't didn't complain because it was intelligence. But
Speaker 5: what was interesting is that Darryl Gates hated He just
Speaker 5: absolutely hated gays, and if he thought any cop was
Speaker 5: gay or even got closer, he had fired them. Haven't fired.
Speaker 5: But anyway, he thought over ten thousand percent of Terry
Speaker 5: Brown was gay. So we had to set up information
Speaker 5: gathering to try to prove that he was gay. And
Speaker 5: it went so far is that there was a some
Speaker 5: sort of little publication made some comment about Brown going
Speaker 5: down meeting with this attorney who was gay in Mississippi,
Speaker 5: and because of that, Gates sent his number one OCID
Speaker 5: guy who only gathered information on politicians, down to Mississippi
Speaker 5: to try to get the information to prove that Brown
Speaker 5: was gay so he could blackmail him with it. He
Speaker 5: never got anything, but he was trying desperately. Also on
Speaker 5: John Vandicap was the district attorney in La. Then he
Speaker 5: became the ag of California, and I was working on
Speaker 5: this guy who was an organized crime figure from Chicago.
Speaker 5: He lived in Laguna Beach, California, and the FBI had
Speaker 5: a pen register on his phone which shows telephone numbers
Speaker 5: that are called and come in well going through it
Speaker 5: from this beach house. This mob guy called that number,
Speaker 5: but it lasted for about fifteen to twenty thirty seconds,
Speaker 5: so it was apparently a wrong number because the number
Speaker 5: following that on this list the FBI gave us was
Speaker 5: one digit off. So the guy hung up calls that
Speaker 5: number in chats for about half hour, so we knew
Speaker 5: it was just probably a misstyle. Well that went up
Speaker 5: to Gates's office. Gates learned about it in the intelligence briefing,
Speaker 5: and he ordered us to immediately go down to this
Speaker 5: beach house and start running surveillances on it, because Laguna
Speaker 5: Beach was known as a gay en play man. And
Speaker 5: Gates said, if he's got a house there, he's got
Speaker 5: to be gay. I want you guys to prove it,
Speaker 5: find out, and we're going. Hey, we looked at the property.
Speaker 5: The house had been in their family for decades, and
Speaker 5: we said, you know, there's nothing to it. So we
Speaker 5: got permission too if we wanted to rent a yacht
Speaker 5: to anchor it off the beach so we can watch
Speaker 5: it and not be conspicuous. But we went down there.
Speaker 5: I was running surveillance and I said, I said, this
Speaker 5: is nuts, just as crazy. And so I walked over
Speaker 5: to the house. It was on the beach front and
Speaker 5: I looked at it and it was covered with cobwebs
Speaker 5: and spider webs and leaves and debris all around the
Speaker 5: front door, the entry door. Nobody had been there probably
Speaker 5: a month, if not a year or so. So we
Speaker 5: went back before that to the captain, Hey, this is
Speaker 5: just to waste the time, and so forth. He talks
Speaker 5: to the Gates about it, and Gates just said, no,
Speaker 5: keep an eye on that guy. Vandicamp because I want
Speaker 5: to know if he's gay, and I want to have
Speaker 5: the evidence. And because once again Gates was into doing
Speaker 5: what jaegor Hoover did, and that is black mainly people
Speaker 5: to get them to do what he wanted. And that's
Speaker 5: what OCID was doing. We were gathering information on people
Speaker 5: of that. The news media, they were a big target
Speaker 5: for us. We were in surveillances on oh geez, the
Speaker 5: it was Shelby Coffee who headed the La Times. He's
Speaker 5: the editor. Their surveillances run on him. He was watched
Speaker 5: every time he went to lax and what flights he
Speaker 5: went on on and came in on, as was Lou Wasserman,
Speaker 5: the head of MCA at the time, and anybody liked that,
Speaker 5: any politician. We would go to the airport, the airport crew,
Speaker 5: they would read all the rosters who was coming up,
Speaker 5: coming in or going out on any flights, especially on
Speaker 5: Western airlines going to Vegas, and it was all report
Speaker 5: to the chief because that's what he wanted. But it's
Speaker 5: was a complete invasion of everybody's privacy, as you can imagine.
Speaker 5: But that's what LAP Intelligence had been doing for decades,
Speaker 5: literally decades.
Speaker 4: This secret police elite unit you talk about, you also
Speaker 4: talk about just the police culture itself of people telling
Speaker 4: on others, telling those secrets, divulging those secrets. Do you
Speaker 4: mind telling us just what happened in this assassination attempt
Speaker 4: and also just how you feel about it's possible connection
Speaker 4: with what you know and what you were going to divulge. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because one I've never been able to remove the
Speaker 5: possibility that the assassin has a tempt on me was
Speaker 5: because of what I was digging into regarding Marilyn Monroe.
Speaker 5: I could never remove that. I was involved in a
Speaker 5: number of intelligence operations at the time, including one with
Speaker 5: the commanding general the Federal Allies in Mexico. And his
Speaker 5: name was Artural Derazzo. And what he was one he
Speaker 5: was at that time one of the largest cocaine traffickers
Speaker 5: in Mexico. He was head of the Federal Allies and
Speaker 5: he was also the middleman between the CIA and the
Speaker 5: Contrast for weaponshipments. And what Arturo did is that he
Speaker 5: set up some clandestine airstrips through Mexico so the CIA
Speaker 5: flights heading down could land if they needed, refuel if
Speaker 5: they needed, and then make their way in to deliver
Speaker 5: their arms and coming back. They had a deal where
Speaker 5: he would load the planes up with drugs and they
Speaker 5: were flown back in. We knew that for a fact.
Speaker 5: We confirmed that with some CIA guys that we were
Speaker 5: working with on joint operations and anyway, so that's what
Speaker 5: he was doing, and obviously it's completely illegal on a
Speaker 5: number of fronts. But after I had a meeting in
Speaker 5: the desert one night, I came home and this is
Speaker 5: just shortly after I interrogated Lawford, and as I was
Speaker 5: pulling up my house about right around midnight, a motorcycle
Speaker 5: pulls up next to me empt these what I was
Speaker 5: told was a machine pistol, probably a Ruger converted to
Speaker 5: full automatic twenty two into the driver's side, and I
Speaker 5: saw that silhouette of a hand with a gun coming
Speaker 5: at me just before the shot went off, and I
Speaker 5: just jerked the car to the right, hit the brakes,
Speaker 5: and I went down dirt embankment and I could hear
Speaker 5: the popping everything like that, very rapid, and before the
Speaker 5: car came to arrest in this dirt field, I jumped
Speaker 5: out because I didn't want to be stuck in a car,
Speaker 5: because like being in a rolling coffin and when I
Speaker 5: jumped out, I however, I twisted and hit I damaged
Speaker 5: my spinal cord and I just couldn't move my legs
Speaker 5: at that stage, and they were numb, and all I
Speaker 5: remember hearing was some guy running through the brush because
Speaker 5: it was heavy brush towards me, and I thought it
Speaker 5: was the shooter coming to finish me off. I had
Speaker 5: a gun stretched my leg, a little two age thirty eight,
Speaker 5: but I couldn't reach it, and I just knew that
Speaker 5: was the end of me. I said, I just thought
Speaker 5: this is the shooter coming to finish me off. Well
Speaker 5: it wasn't. Fortunately he was a fireman who lived nearby
Speaker 5: and he heard the crash. But from that time forward,
Speaker 5: as soon as I got they took them to a
Speaker 5: trauma center and they're treating me. My lieutenant shows up
Speaker 5: and he says, Okay, here's what I want you to do.
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm laying on a gurdy right in
Speaker 5: the emergency room. He says, yeah, when the guys get
Speaker 5: here from Huntington Beach there, they're going to do the investigation.
Speaker 5: Don't tell them anything you're doing. Don't tell them anything
Speaker 5: about derasal, don't tell them anything about this, don't tell
Speaker 5: anything about that, and I go, what what are you
Speaker 5: talking about? Somebody just tried to kill me and you're
Speaker 5: telling me to lie to the investigators and being a
Speaker 5: good cop at the time, you know, following direction. I
Speaker 5: asked him why. She said, I'll tell you later, and
Speaker 5: he says, part of the reason, he says, those guys
Speaker 5: we know they're in the pocket of the mafia, the
Speaker 5: Huntington Beach detectives. I was dealing with them, not the
Speaker 5: same guys, some other detectives there on some other cases,
Speaker 5: and I thought, this is this is friggin nuts. And
Speaker 5: so it just continue that way and it was just
Speaker 5: a huge onslaught of LAPD trying to crush the story
Speaker 5: that I could release. And matter of fact, they had
Speaker 5: such power with the media. Here it is you have
Speaker 5: an undercover copy and ambushed at his house, right and
Speaker 5: not you think that would make the newspaper be a
Speaker 5: major story. Current never appeared at anything. They kept it
Speaker 5: out of the media. And then it just got very
Speaker 5: very strange what they started doing and ordered me to do.
Speaker 5: And they burglarized, which was interesting. They burglarized our house
Speaker 5: twice because they were obviously very worried that I had
Speaker 5: documents that would sink them, meaning the chief of police
Speaker 5: and you know, possibly the contra thing at the time.
Speaker 5: And sure, yeah, they broke in twice. One time was
Speaker 5: rather sing because they conspired with the local PD. Because
Speaker 5: I was three hundred and fifty miles away. And this
Speaker 5: isn't just weeks. This went on for about eighteen months.
Speaker 5: Two years after this stuff was going on, and I
Speaker 5: was at three hundre and fifty miles away with some people.
Speaker 5: My wife was at work. The local police go to
Speaker 5: our house and there's a detective unit there and just
Speaker 5: happened to be that there's a retired LA cop living
Speaker 5: down the street and he's watching this. He says, he
Speaker 5: sees them talk to the guy in the patrol car.
Speaker 5: He drives away. They walked to the side of our house,
Speaker 5: break in the bedroom window, sets off the alarm, and
Speaker 5: he says, within a minute or so the alarm was deactivated. Well,
Speaker 5: the only person knew how to deactivate the alarm was
Speaker 5: my former partner in intelligence who helped me install it.
Speaker 5: And so my attorney, because I already filed suit against
Speaker 5: LAPD contacts for police in Huney and Beach. He says, Okay,
Speaker 5: this is what happened. He says, Well, you know what happened.
Speaker 5: We got a nine to one to one call from
Speaker 5: that house and the person said they're going to kill themselves,
Speaker 5: and then the person hung up and she goes, okay,
Speaker 5: he says, then we called back, meaning the PD called
Speaker 5: back and the person picked up the phone and just
Speaker 5: hung it up. That supposedly came from our house, right, Well,
Speaker 5: the only living thing that was utter house was a
Speaker 5: puppy we had, well that was in the yard, wasn't
Speaker 5: in the house. So that was the excuse to break in.
Speaker 5: But they didn't break in. It was LPD who broke in.
Speaker 5: And later a guy from OCID came to me and
Speaker 5: he said, here are the guys who broke in your house,
Speaker 5: and this is why. And they were looking. They're terrified
Speaker 5: that I had documents, and so that happened. Also some
Speaker 5: intelligence guys when I was still in the hospital in
Speaker 5: a private room under obviously in the assumed name and
Speaker 5: so forth and guarded, they came in and they told
Speaker 5: me that yes, I was a target of the assassination,
Speaker 5: but my wife was also targeted to be assassinated.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, And.
Speaker 5: Obviously I'm going, what do you guys tell what's the deal?
Speaker 5: And they said, well, basically, what I was told is
Speaker 5: that there's some very powerful people were very concerned with
Speaker 5: what I knew, what I might do regarding the contras
Speaker 5: at the time, because that's what Deraza was involved in,
Speaker 5: and the contrac the whole contra thing hadn't come out
Speaker 5: in the media yet, and so I said. The deal
Speaker 5: was that the person who shot it, tried to kill me,
Speaker 5: was already back in Nicaragua the following day, and that
Speaker 5: my wife was targeted because they wanted to send a message,
Speaker 5: a very strong message that anybody trying to interfere with
Speaker 5: this was going to be killed because it was such
Speaker 5: a huge narcotic trafficking thing too, and that would have
Speaker 5: sent a message to everybody. A cop and his wife
Speaker 5: get assassinated. But yeah, it was. It was very bizarre,
Speaker 5: very bizarre, and it's a long story, but you know,
Speaker 5: it was a frightening story at the time.
Speaker 4: Back to Marylyn, it is interesting that you write about
Speaker 4: the incredible relationship that LAPD with OCDID and its leaders
Speaker 4: and to protect the Kennedys from their own indiscretions and
Speaker 4: the knowledge that was basically everyone knew about their their
Speaker 4: interactions with Marilyn Monroe. It's very interesting too when you
Speaker 4: talk about how serious they were to keep a lid
Speaker 4: on this when you write about Dorothy Killgall a columnist,
Speaker 4: and what happens with her, and it seemed that there
Speaker 4: is some again overreached by government here that they intervene
Speaker 4: and have something to do with Dorothy's demise.
Speaker 5: They very well, and what would you have to do
Speaker 5: is look at how the country or the world events
Speaker 5: at the time, and the power that the president had,
Speaker 5: and considering what was going on with the Soviet Union
Speaker 5: in Cuba and so forth, and then you look at
Speaker 5: the background of the Kennedys at that time, which I've
Speaker 5: written another book about assassinations that they were authorizing of
Speaker 5: different leaders in different generals and different militaries around the world.
Speaker 5: And so you see that, you say, okay, we're there.
Speaker 5: They were authorizing the siity to kill these various people
Speaker 5: though someone were leaders of various countries. Would they hesitate
Speaker 5: at killing an actress, you know? And the answer would
Speaker 5: be who's expendable then the president or Maryland, and it
Speaker 5: would be Maryland. What is interesting, though, is why Robert
Speaker 5: actually came out that night and met with her and
Speaker 5: gave her that drink whatever's in it. Why he did that,
Speaker 5: But I think from reading all the intelligence on it
Speaker 5: is that they were so concerned she was going to
Speaker 5: go public so quickly they had to do that just
Speaker 5: to keep her from going public. But at the time,
Speaker 5: there were other ways they could have handled her. They
Speaker 5: could have got any psychiatrists and they would have just
Speaker 5: committed her to a mental institution. It was very easy
Speaker 5: to do back then, and they would have just drugged
Speaker 5: her up, kept her in their six months or a year,
Speaker 5: and then when they released her, no matter what she said,
Speaker 5: they would all, poor Maryland, she's lost her mind. You know,
Speaker 5: she's in an institution, using a lot of drugs there.
Speaker 5: She's just completely confused about the world. It didn't have
Speaker 5: to be done the way it was.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you basically what seems that the conclusion is is
Speaker 4: that because she was talking about doing this press conference
Speaker 4: in a few days and that she and they, according
Speaker 4: to what you read, is that Kennedy asked, what do
Speaker 4: you want? And so she was could not be reconciled
Speaker 4: here and what she wanted and what Kennedy wanted, and
Speaker 4: so there was had to have this murder occur.
Speaker 5: There's only one way out at that stage, and obviously
Speaker 5: she didn't understand it, but other people understood it. And
Speaker 5: obviously there was it was planned out because otherwise Hamilton
Speaker 5: and the other guy from OCID would not have showed
Speaker 5: up at her doorstep at that time of night. It
Speaker 5: just wouldn't. It never would have happened. And so there
Speaker 5: was some pre planning on that if it went to
Speaker 5: that point. And you know, Lawford was very good about
Speaker 5: being truthful. Watching him, I'm absolutely convinced he had no
Speaker 5: prior knowledge of this what was going to happen to her.
Speaker 5: And without question, I believe that guilt followed him for
Speaker 5: the rest of his life, got him heavily into drugs
Speaker 5: and alcohol. It really destroyed the man carrying that burden.
Speaker 5: And I know he blamed them, but he never really
Speaker 5: came out saying. And I know when he was dying
Speaker 5: about two that's probably about two or three years after
Speaker 5: I interrogated him. He was in the hospital dying and
Speaker 5: some reporters were there. They said, tell us about you
Speaker 5: and Maryland and Robert could. He refused to talk about
Speaker 5: He would he wouldn't talk about even Ben. Yeah, but
Speaker 5: it's just, you know, just the whole story is, it's
Speaker 5: just very sad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was great police work that you decided to,
Speaker 4: you know, even though he didn't agree to anything like that,
Speaker 4: that you just raised it up a notch and interrogated
Speaker 4: him where it started off as a conversation he believed,
Speaker 4: but it turned into the interrogation that got us the
Speaker 4: information that is the core of this book. An incredible exhalation,
Speaker 4: it was, Yeah, exactly. I want to thank you very
Speaker 4: much Mike roth Miller for coming on and talking about
Speaker 4: your latest Bombshell, The Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Renau.
Speaker 4: You know that you're all over Amazon with all your
Speaker 4: other previous work, and how might anyone else find out
Speaker 4: about this book?
Speaker 5: Well, bombshell right now be Amazon and Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 5: and they're probably hundreds of if not thousands of bookstores
Speaker 5: that could be ordered through, but I would recommend just
Speaker 5: going to Amazon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you so much, Mike Rothmiller. It has been
Speaker 4: an absolute delight Bombshell to Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Renau.
Speaker 4: If you have a great evening, Thank you so much
Speaker 4: for this interview.
Speaker 5: You too, you're welcome, thank you, good night.