Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her home in 1962. The official cause was recorded as suicide, but more than 60 years later, one of the coroners responsible for the autopsy said he was not sure about the cause of death.
Thomas Noguchi was one of the youngest coroners in Los Angeles when he was assigned to perform Marilyn Monroe’s autopsy.
Now, at 98 years old, Noguchi told Anne Soon Choi in the book “LA Coroner” that he felt something was wrong with the situation. He read the investigator’s report, which stated:
“Several bottles of pills were found scattered on the nightstand, including an empty bottle of Nembutal, sleeping pills, and a partially empty bottle of chloral hydrate, a powerful sedative.”
Marilyn Monroe was found lying face down, naked, in bed, with her hand stretched out towards the nearby phone.
Noguchi stated that the report indicated Monroe had received the Nembutal prescription two days before and had spoken with her psychiatrist just one day before she died.
The coroner found no injection marks on the actress’s body. He examined Monroe’s stomach and small intestine and found no visual evidence of the pills.
After analyzing samples, chief toxicologist Raymond Abernathy detected fatal levels of pentobarbital and chloral hydrate in Marilyn Monroe’s body and concluded that no further tests were necessary.
However, Noguchi told Choi he became anxious and said he knew that not conducting further tests would leave “many questions unanswered.” He said he wanted to correct the situation by analyzing the actress’s stomach contents and organs.
“Without a complete analysis, it was impossible to rule out that Monroe died from an injection rather than from ingesting pills. But what could he do? He couldn’t challenge Curphey or the chief toxicologist,” Choi wrote in the book.
Noguchi then began to question whether he had been part of a cover-up of a murder.
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