President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby had simultaneous affairs with Marilyn Monroe, a new book reveals.
In ‘Don’t ask: The Kennedys and the women they destroyed’Maureen Callahan, author and DailyMail.com columnist, describes cross-relationships as an “incestuous sexual competition” between the two men.
Marilyn met JFK, who was already married to Jackie, in 1954 at a Hollywood party, Callahan writes, and over the next few years the actress fell in love with both the president and his brother, who was also married.
Marilyn Monroe sings ‘Happy Birthday’ to President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, May 19, 1962.
The only known photograph of Marilyn with Bobby (left) and JFK, taken at a reception after her performance at the Garden.
Marilyn’s psychiatrist was very concerned about the romances, warning ‘I try to help her not feel so alone and (…) get involved with very destructive people who will enter into a kind of sadomasochistic relationship with her.’
On May 19, 1962, Marilyn sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to JFK at his famous performance at Madison Square Garden.
But, Callahan reveals, just thirty minutes before appearing on stage, she had sex with Bobby in his dressing room.
“They spent 15 minutes alone together,” Callahan writes.
The marriage made her late to the stage, where she arrived “drunk and blushing from the transgressive sex she had just had with Bobby, with her dress so tight she could barely walk.”
Jackie Kennedy was “furious” after the performance, leaving JFK “jawed” in the audience. And so, Callahan writes, Jackie gave her husband an “ultimatum,” telling him that she could no longer see Marilyn, or “she would divorce him, taking the children and costing him a second term.”
JFK agreed and never slept with Marilyn again.
Her romance with Bobby continued; Bobby even visited her the night she died at her Los Angeles home on August 4, 1962.
“Bobby and Jack discovered that the FBI and CIA had bugged Marilyn’s home and phone line without her knowledge… Bobby wouldn’t leave without the recordings,” Callahan writes.
‘Where the hell is he?’ Bobby asked. But Marilyn “had no idea” what she was talking about.
On May 19, 1962, Marilyn sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to JFK at his famous performance at Madison Square Garden. But, Callahan reveals, just thirty minutes before appearing on stage, she had sex with Bobby in her dressing room.
Bobby left empty-handed and his housekeeper found Marilyn’s body early the next morning. “She was face down on her bed, naked, with her phone still in her hand,” Callahan writes.
“Former FBI agent James Doyle later admitted that the Bureau had been ordered to delete certain telephone records (from Marilyn’s home),” it adds. ‘Recovered in the 1980s, Marilyn’s records showed that she had called Bobby’s workplace eight times between June 25 and 30… Reports suggest that she had had an abortion on July 20 and that the baby could have been Bobby’s.’
Marilyn’s second husband, Joe DiMaggio, banned the two Kennedy brothers from attending Marilyn’s funeral.
“I always knew who killed her, but I didn’t want to start a revolution in this country,” DiMaggio said years later. “She told me that someone would kill her, but I stayed silent.
All the Kennedys were conquerors and always got their way. In a hundred years they will have their way.
Callahan also reveals that, in 1985, ABC News planned to air a special documentary about JFK and Bobby’s possible involvement in Marilyn’s death, but it was canceled just hours before it was scheduled to air.
The network’s then-president, Roone Arledge, who was “an old friend of Ethel Kennedy (Bobby’s wife),” defended his decision by saying that the special was “gossip column stuff” and “not up to par with their billing”.