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Marilyn Monroe's Death: New Clues

MIAMI (CBS4) -- Fifty years after Marilyn Monroe; the most famous movie star in Hollywood, was found dead in her Brentwood home, many theorists don't believe the coroner's report.  It concluded a "probable homicide" as the cause of death.

But newly released tapes made in 1998 by Monroe's personal hairdresser, George Masters, said Marilyn didn't spend the last night of her life at her home in Southern California.  But in Lake Tahoe at Cal-Neva Resort and Casino.  He said he knew this because he was with her.

Hans Weig is tour director at Cal-Neva. "This is where the rich and elite used to come and this was their private playground."

From 1960 to 1963 Cal-Neva was the place where the Rat Pack called their 'home away from home'.  It is located on the borders of Nevada and California.

Cal-Neva offered a taste of Sin City but with the seclusion celebrities craved.  It's owner was none other than Ol' Blue Eyes.

Frank Sinatra made sure his Cal-Neva was the perfect hideaway.  The original underground tunnels built in the 20's can still be seen today.  Rumors were that these tunnels were meant for the transportation of liquor up from the lake, as well to conceal the comings and goings of celebrities, gangsters, and politicians who checked in at the resort.  The original copper mesh still lines the walls of the tunnels likely used to foil wire taps.

Weig said, "Marilyn Monroe used to stay in Cabin #3.  It was known as the girl's cabin. So if Marilyn did die here, she died in the heart-shaped bed that used to be in here."

But the mystery seems to be unfolding, in the audio recordings of George Masters, her hairdresser. He not only said that he and Marilyn were at Cal-Neva the night before she was found dead, but that she was seen with mob boss Sam Giancana that same night as well.

Some suspect the mobster gave her the drug dose that killed her, and that she was transported to her southern California home, where she was found the next morning, August 5th, face down, naked and dead...a collection of pills were located on her nightstand.

Gene Margolis is the author of Marilyn Monroe: The Case for Murder, "There were enough drugs in her to kill about three people.  Yet there was absolutely nothing in her stomach, and that is pretty much the strongest evidence of murder, is the fact that there should have been undissolved capsules."

He doesn't buy Master's claims that Monroe was at Cal-Neva the night before her death, but he doesn't doubt that the Kennedy's were involved in Monroe's death.

He validated this and said "The Kennedy's said they didn't want to see her anymore."

Margolis and others have suggested that she was intentionally drugged, injected with barbiturates, and that Bobby Kennedy visited her house before she died.  "Robert Kennedy was present at her house along with two men.  The housekeeper, Mrs. Murray was ordered out of the house along with her son-in-law who was present."

Margolis further claimed that Monroe's long-time psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, was under pressure from Bobby Kennedy.

"Bobby tricked Greenson into thinking that not only was Marilyn going to reveal the sexual affairs with Jack and Bobby.  But Bobby tricked Greenson into thinking Marilyn was going to go public with her affair with Greenson, which was not true," stated Margolis.

Monroe's publicist later ended up working for the Kennedy's.  And police reports and FBI files on the sex goddess have been mysteriously lost, destroyed, or blacked out.

What we may never know is if Marilyn Monroe spent her final hours at a Rat Pack hangout or at her Brentwood hacienda.  So her death is as riveting a mystery as anything Hollywood has ever created.

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