Kennedy, his blood rising, shook his fist in her face. She slapped it away. Seizing her wrists, he swore in her face. She struggled free and slapped him.
While Kennedy searched the house for Marilyn’s diary, Lawford sat with her on the sofa in the living room, trying to calm her. The row simmered and erupted repeatedly, as the Attorney-General upended drawers in search of the red book and Marilyn screamed at him to leave. He kept threatening her, alternately warning her to ‘shut your mouth’ and promising to pay her off. Eventually, Kennedy went into the kitchen and fraught calm descended. Lawford left Marilyn’s side and went to plead with his friend to leave, before neighbours called the police.
Kennedy was stirring a glass of water with a spoon. He appeared to be pouring something into it. Lawford asked what he was doing. ‘Nothing!’ snapped Kennedy.
Marilyn was weeping with her head in her hands when the two men went back into the living room. ‘Drink this, you’ll feel better,’ Kennedy told her. Assuming the water was dosed with a sedative, Lawford encouraged her to drink it. She took a sip, and remarked that it tasted unpleasant.
Kennedy urged her to finish it. Marilyn drained the glass and lay back. Now that she was quiet, both men searched the whole house, but did not find the diary.
When they went back to the living room, Marilyn had not moved. She was leaning back with her head tilted backward and appeared to be sleeping. Kennedy shook her shoulder until a groggy and obviously drugged Marilyn stirred.
Her voice was a whisper, slurred and unintelligible. Kennedy said her name, but she seemed to pass out and didn’t respond.
Lawford asked Kennedy, ‘What did you give her?’ Kennedy stared at her, then turned to Lawford but didn’t answer.
Now she was showing no signs of life. Lawford shook her but her complexion was turning waxen. ‘She’s not breathing,’ he said. ‘What do we do?’
‘Leave her,’ Kennedy said. They went to the door, and were confronted by two men. Lawford thought at first they were neighbours, then realised they were plain-clothes detectives or secret service agents.
For a moment, Lawford thought his career and Bobby Kennedy’s were over. But the politician nodded briefly to the men, who pushed past them into the house.
‘Who are they?’ Lawford demanded as they hurried back to the car. Kennedy didn’t reply. He got into the back of the Lincoln Continental and demanded to be taken to the airport.
Lawford was in shock. He knew Marilyn was not merely ‘out of it’. She was dead. His brain spinning and tumbling with fear, he stopped thinking clearly. He had to drive Bobby Kennedy to the airport but found himself confused as to what direction to go.
The bizarre experience of an L.A. traffic cop confirms this sequence of events and explains what happened next.
Detective Lynn Franklin saw a Lincoln Continental doing 70mph, twice the legal limit, heading east on the city’s Olympic Boulevard, at 12.10am on Sunday August 5.
When he pulled the car over, he recognised Lawford and asked: ‘Pete, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘I’m trying to get the Attorney-General to the airport,’ retorted the actor.
