-Caveat Lector-
An excerpt from:
Kilgallen
Lee Israel©1979
Delacorte Press
New York, NY
ISBN 0-440-04522-3
--[3]--
EPILOGUE
WHAT happened to Dorothy?
The heart-attack verdict was short-lived. Over the staunch objections of
Richard Kollmar, Dorothy was removed to the Medical Examiner's Office for
autopsy. A death certificate issued on November 15 ascribed the cause to
"acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication-circumstances
undertermined[sic]." It meant that she died from too much pills and liquor.
"Circumstances undetermined" is not a common designation. The ME's office,
which was headed at the time by the august forensic pathologist Milton
Helpern, was admitting that it did not know whether the death was suicidal or
accidental. The question of foul play was never officially entertained.
After three years of investigating the events surrounding Dorothy's death, it
is clear to me that she did not die accidentally and that a network of varied
activities, impelled by disparate purposes, conspired effectively to
obfuscate the truth.
A household of family and servants endeavored to protect Dorothy from
scandal—either because they thought she had taken her own life, feared that
the public would misconstrue, or had reason to believe that she was not alone
in the third-floor master bedroom before she succumbed. Dorothy would have
enjoyed the Grand Guignol audition for witnesses that was staged—on her
behalf.
The pathology department of the New York Medical Ex-aminer's Office did its
job competently. But what it knew was more than it told; and pathology was
itself apparently told much less than it should have been by the chemists in
toxicology, upon whom the former relied for analysis and quantification of
the barbiturates and basic drugs that were reposited in Dorothy's body. Dr.
James L. Luke, who was dispatched to the house on November 8, explained to me
in a telephone interview, "You can't just go charging around in a situation
like that causing a lot of grief, much of which may be unnecessary. These
kinds of cases are much more complicated than, say, Jame Smith." [1]
The New York City Police Department did virtually nothing to determine the
circumstances under which Dorothy Kilgallen died. Its reports, if such they
may be called, reveal that a woman was found dead in a tidy room. Witnesses
were not interviewed. No attempt was made to reconstruct the events of the
previous night. A lone and singular police procedure was utilized that seemed
designed to obviate any possibility of determining what happened to Dorothy
after she greeted Harvey Daniels and repaired to her intimate corner at the
Regency Lounge.
The official version disseminated to the press implied accident. Dr. Luke,
who performed the autopsy and certified the death, spoke ex cathedra for his
office. His statements combined inept waffling with extraordinary
arbitrariness. Luke was interviewed by the New York Herald Tribune for a
story that appeared on November 16:
Dr. Luke would not speculate about the form in which Miss Kilgallen had taken
the barbiturates. "We'd rather leave that up in the air," he said. "We don't
want to give that out-well, just because." . . . He said that combining
alcohol and sleeping pills was a common form of accidental death. Miss
Kilgallen had taken only "moderate amounts" of alcohol and the drug before
her death, Dr. Luke said. He wouldn't give any figures.[2]
The New York Times had reported on November 10 that a Medical Examiner's
report said that Miss Kilgallen died of 'the effects of a combination of
alcohol and barbiturates, neither of which had been taken in excessive
quantity.'" That same Times piece stated that a bill had been filed for
introduction to the New York City Council by Councilman-at-Large Paul
O'Dwyer, which would further delimit the disclosing of Medical Examiner's
findings in any death because of "the public speculation over the recent
death of Dorothy Kilgallen."
Dorothy might have commented, as she did when she discovered that the
Department of justice deemed information about Lee Harvey Oswald irrelevant
to the defense of Jack Ruby—say that again, slowly.
Did the public have a right to know? To penetrate what was pretty obviously a
benign attempt to withhold facts about the death of a Roman Catholic woman?
Darkness, alas, is not selective.
Pete Hamill wrote an exceedingly Pete Hamill column about Dorothy the day
after she died, called "The Celebrity." He said that she had been a superb
reporter but that she had stooped to conquer, to become a gossip columnist
and a television personality instead, and had grown rueful and lonesome in
the end. Hamill did not know Dorothy any better than the sentinels of
darkness who watched over the truth at 45 East Sixty-eighth Street. He quoted
a friend of hers, who said, "Hell, she even died alone." Hamill concluded his
piece: "She died in her five-story townhouse . . . in one of the twenty-two
rooms, next to one of her eighteen telephones."[3]
Had Pete Hamill been as knowledgeable as he was effective, there would be no
reason now to dig further. What he did not mention, however, was that she had
resumed her reporting career at the end of her life, that she was pursuing
the most important story of her time, and that she had earned the right to
think that at least some of her eighteen telephones were bugged by an agency
of the United States government.
What happened to Dorothy?
The extent of at least one of the cover-ups that surrounded her death
betrayed a power and modality that transcended good works. Dr. James Luke
probably did not think she committed suicide, and he remains chary about
quantification. By "moderate," he explained in a telephone conversation in
1978, he meant that "the pills were not what we might expect to find in cases
that are suicide." He knew, additionally, back in 1965, that there were 50
cubic centimeters of "pink fluid" found in her stomach."[4] The liquid was
sent to toxicology for analysis. If the analysis was done, the results were
not made available to him on the formal toxicological report.
During our telephone conversation, he perused the autopsy results. "There is
material in her stomach which I'm sure is Seconal, he said. "From a
quantitative basis, it would have been important to know what was in the
stomach. Clearly, it was something that if it wasn't done should have been
done. We had a problem with the laboratory. Capabilities were not what they
should have been."[5]
Dr. Michael Baden, chief medical examiner for the City of New York, examined
the raw data on Luke's autopsy report during an interview in 1978. He
concluded that the percentage of barbiturate found in Dorothy's brain and
liver indicated that the body reposited the equivalent of "fifteen to twenty"
100-milligram Seconal capsules. Equivalency is significant, as we shall see,
for several reasons. Seconal was assumed because it was the drug prescribed
to her. Back in 1965, however, the ME's office did not have the techniques to
distinguish among the three groups of fast-acting barbiturates. Baden's
estimate could not include the unanalyzed pink fluid. When I asked him why,
back in 1965, Luke had termed such an ingestion "moderate," Baden replied,
You should see some of the cases we get in here!"[6]
Dr. Donald Hoffman, senior chemist in toxicology at the New York Medical
Examiner's Office, examined the autopsy report and concurred that Baden's
estimate was "reasonable." He added, "The formal data indicate that it was
acute poisoning due to alcohol and barbiturates and that the barbiturates
alone could possibly have killed her."[7]
Two other professionals looked at the medical values of barbiturates and
alcohol found in brain and liver. Neither wishes to be named. One, a
pathologist associated with an independent laboratory, stated, "She
apparently drank a lot and took a lot of pills." The other, also a senior
chemist in toxicology at the Medical Examiner's office, agreed with Dr.
Hoffman. "The pills alone," he said, "were in the lethal range.
On my behalf, two different doctors were questioned in 1978 regarding what
they were told about the Kilgallen case in 1965. They were both associated
with the ME's office then but not directly involved with the work that was
being done to determine the cause of Dorothy's death. What had been presented
to them as the truth?
Both of them recalled that there was alcohol present and a little Seconal."
One was asked, "Can you look back upon what basis you recall it [the Seconal]
being present in a small amount?" He responded, "That was the word that was
being spread—that there was alcohol and a very small amount of barbiturate."
After a column by Liz Smith appeared in papers throughout the country,
alluding extensively to my investigation of Dorothy's death and its
relationship to the Kennedy assassination, I received a letter from a
forensic pathologist who practices in Michigan. He volunteered to do what he
could to assist me in evaluating the medical data contained in the autopsy
report. He claimed to have an interest in Dorothy and in the Kennedy
assassination. After a purported consultation with other pathologists in the
area, whom he would not name, the man from Michigan concluded: "The overall
weight of evidence here leads us toward accidental death, two to five
capsules."[8]
The process is called "disinforming." It is a favorite ruse of intelligence
agencies to disseminate data that is untrue but whose acceptance is useful to
them.
How might it avail anyone to "disinform" some members of the Medical
Examiner's office in 1965 and a biographer in 1977? To furnish data that is
consistent with accident rather than suicide? Suicides must be investigated
to exclude the possibility of foul play. Psychological autopsies are
performed to elicit information about the decedent's mood and activities
prior to the time of death. Steps are retraced. Events are reconstructed.
Some effort is made to construct a chain between life and death.
In September, 1978, for instance, the thirty-one-year-old heir to the
Woodward fortune plunged to his death from his ninth-floor hotel suite in New
York. A thorough police investigation was conducted because it was determined
that James T. Woodward "had a pleasant conversation" with a hotel clerk
thirty-five minutes before his body was found on the roof of an adjacent
building. He had been "in good spirits, even cheerful." Such a revelation is
not a definitive indication of foul play. It is, however, the kind of
information that issues from a routine investigation of suicide and compels
even further probing.
After Dorothy's death was decreed an accident by a most extraordinary
upending of good sense and common knowledge, any attempt to construct a
life-to-death chain was deemed unwarranted. Thus, the skeletal police
reports, represented to me as complete, and that part of the Medical
Examiner's autopsy report that details gross findings at the scene, reveal
only that "a middle-aged," "well-nourished," "white female" was discovered
dead abed in "an orderly elegant apartment." She had on a blue robe, false
eyelashes, and extensive makeup "involving the face, neck, and upper chest."
She lay on her back, her head tilted left on a pillow, the covers pulled
snugly up to her chin. She was bathed in the constricted light of a small,
overhead reading lamp. A copy of Robert Ruark's new novel had fallen to one
side of her.[9]
The sentinels respected her vanity even in death. She had tried, out in
public restaurants, to avoid using or at least being seen in the eyeglasses
she required to read anything but the boldest menu print. The book was
appropriately noted. And the broadly bruited, obvious surmise was that she
was reading before she was overtaken. There is, however, no mention of
eyeglasses found on or around the bed.
What happened to Dorothy?
She was discovered dead, of that we can be quite sure, at least twice. The
official version sets the time at noon or one on Monday. The police report,
signed by Detective John A. Doyle of the local 19th Precinct, states: "DOA
found by Maid Marie Eicher S/A between 12 and I PM lying on back in bed clad
in night clothes. Pronounced DOA by Dr. Saul Heller 11 E. 68th St.: ME Dr.
Luke present at scene."[10] The autopsy report states: "According to maid,
she went in to awaken deceased at 12 noon and found her unresponsive."
James and Evelyn Clement, the butler and the cook, were interviewed in 1978.
They subscribe wholly to the official version. Sunday was their day off.
After arriving at the house early Monday morning, James contended that he
dispatched Marie to awaken Dorothy around noon. There was, he said, a meeting
at Kerry's school for which she had to prepare.[11]
Marie was Dorothy's personal maid. Anne Hamilton recalled that she "came in
now and then to sew and prepare Dorothy for important engagements. . . . In
her forties, pretty, not tall, charming, happy-go-lucky. She was married and
did this as a sideline." The only two particulars that appear in the police
records about Marie are wrong. Her surname was "Eichler" and not "Eicher."
-S/A,- which refers to residence and means "same as," is also erroneous. She
did not live with the Kollmars. Marie could not be located for questioning.
Pearl Bauer, the last of the Kollmar bookkeepers, is "under the impression
that Marie has been dead for quite a few years."[12]
Marie may have been the first to discover Dorothy, but the time was not one
o'clock or even noon, according to several sources.
All the newspaper accounts of the time related that Dorothy, on the night of
her death, went to sleep in a house co-occupied by husband Richard and son
Kerry. But, in fact, an exchange student who does not wish to be named, but
whose status and residency have been confirmed by Kerry Kollmar, awakened
early that morning on the fourth floor of 45 East Sixty-eighth Street. He
slept in the room previously occupied by Kerry's Nu Nu, Miss Muller, who had
returned to her native Germany. The student had been in the employ of the
family for more than a year. For his room and board, be tutored Kerry in
mathematics and accompanied him, most mornings, either to St. David's or to
the bus that went directly to the school.[13]
The student took Kerry to the bus on Monday, November 8. After returning to
the house, the young man, who speaks with a heavy accent, went up to Myrtle's
fifth-floor office to ask her to type a letter for him.
First she ignored me completely, which was unusual, and did not respond to my
greeting. She was busy shuffling the wheel with address cards. After waiting
for a few minutes, I asked, "could you type this letter?" And she said she
was very busy calling doctor. I thought there was something wrong. But what I
would not be knowing. And she continued with that very frantically. Then I
was coming down to have my breakfast in the tiny room, and somewhere in the
hallway on the same floor, I saw James running.[14]
He did not recall precisely when this all happened. "But it must be before
ten," he said.
Evelyn Clement had had to identify him as "a member of the family" before he
could pass the policeman who was positioned at the door. He talked to James
in the early afternoon. The student remembered their conversation:
This is what he said when I asked him, after coming from the class: that she
herself put an end to her life, that it was a suicide combining pills and
alcohol. I think predominantly this was the theory of the man.
The young man did not agree with the theory that Dorothy had taken her own
life, though if he is correct in his recollections of James Clement's
surmise, then James, at some point, saw something different from the pristine
scene described in the official reports of the police and the medical
examiner. The exchange student commented:
Knowing her personally, I would like not to think suicide. She was very
cheerful about life. She was working on her book, very enthusiastically
finishing. It was a kind of committing, day to day. There is much talk about
the CIA silencing her, but it is only speculation. Anything could have
happened, however, because the house was so big.[15]
James Clement denied, during our interview, that he perceived, had cause to
perceive, or communicated to the exchange student that Dorothy had taken her
own life. Evelyn Clement was present while we talked. Her only addition to
the perplexing reconstruction of the bizarre scene at the house was her clear
memory of Dorothy, "lying there with her earrings on."[16]
Jean Stralem—Mrs. Donald Stralem—a friend to the Kollmars for decades, was en
route to her office at "about ten in the morning" that fateful Monday. She
sat in the back of her husband's limousine, which bore eminently low-numbered
and highly visible commissioner's plates. Her home had apparently been
telephoned, at which time it was determined that she was on her way to the
office. A policeman stopped the car in traffic. She rolled down her window.
The policeman advised her that Richard Kollmar wished to see her. There was
no mention of Dorothy's death. [17]
Mrs. Stralem exclaimed, during our interview, "I still have no idea how that
policeman found me. But that's something you don't forget. And it had to have
been before noon or I would have been on my way to lunch. When I got to the
house, Dick was in his chair crying. So drunk! So upset! So in tears!"[18]
Richard needed a little help from his rich friends. Before the official
intervention of the police and the ME, he was probably hoping to circumvent
the law and arrange to have Dorothy's body taken directly to the Abbey.
If Mrs. Stralem is right about the time at which she was stopped, the police
were blatantly malfeasant. I was given what was purported to be complete New
York City police reports by the Public Information Division, headed in the
beginning of my investigation by Commander Gertrude Schimmel. One document
from the homicide division indicates that it was first informed at 1:00
P.M.[19] That designation is contradicted by the testimony of Detective John
Doyle, who claimed that the first official police presence occurred at 3:20
P.M.
There is more to buttress the theory that Dorothy was discovered hours before
the official version purports.
Michael Sean O'Shea, the press agent, had several conversations with Myrtle
Verne about the death and the discovery. Myrtle herself died in 1975. O'Shea
related the thrust of his talks with the secretary:
Dorothy Kilgallen had already passed on when Myrtle arrived before 10:30 in
the morning. The maid and the houseman were aware of it, so was the local
precinct. Dick Kollmar was aware of it. Miss Verne arrived in the morning
with her usual nonchalance, used her key to the house, went to her office,
and then discovered that the maid and the houseman were very upset. And
that's when Myrtle Verne realized that Dorothy Kilgallen was dead.[20]
Kerry Kollmar interviewed Saul Heller—the doctor who pronounced and the one
for whom James Clement ranon March 16, 1978. Kerry communicated the substance
of their conversation to me.[21] To most of Kerry's questions, Heller
replied, "I'm 73 years old. I simply can't recall." The doctor claimed to
have kept no records about Dorothy or to have been aware of her several
confinements. He did not remember who was at the house when he arrived. He
did, however, eventually recollect that he was "eating breakfast when James
came to fetch me at about 9:30 in the morning."
What happened to Dorothy?
An elaborate cover-up, somewhere in the stylistic middle of Agatha Christie
and Hellzapoppin, was staged, it would seem, at 45 East Sixty-eighth by some
well-intentioned sentinels. To justify the considerable passage of time
between the actual discovery and when it was that they were compelled or felt
prepared to go public, they moved up all pertinent times by several hours,
recapitulating earlier events.
Dorothy's hairdresser, Marc Sinclaire, arrived at the house at about 12:30,
late for an appointment. Sinclaire refused to see or talk to me, but he told
his story, with minor variations, to several of Dorothy's friends, two of
whom I know to be exceptionally accurate in rendering detail.
Jean Bach repeated the hairdresser's tale:
Marc Sinclaire, who discovered her, said that she obviously didn't know it
was going to overtake her. He was supposed to come over and put her together
for a lunch date. They were buddies. He was let in by the servants and told
that she hadn't come down to breakfast yet. He had expected that she'd be
dressed and down. He went upstairs and walked into her room. She was
absolutely upright. Her book was in her hand. He said, "Dorothy, you're late
for your lunch date."[22]
Marlin Swing repeated the 'hairdresser's tale:
Marc was going to do her hair. I think he said that there was a police car
outside the house, but he paid no attention to it at the time. James let him
in and went to get Dorothy. And then he called down to say, "I'm having
trouble waking Miss Kilgallen." Marc said there was no surprise in James's
voice. Like they knew it, and wanted things to look right.
When he found her, Marc said she was wearing a matching outfit-the kind she
would never wear to go to bed—a bolero-type blouse over a nightgown. She had
her eyelashes on. He said she never slept with her false eyelashes on. He
would often wake her up so that he was accustomed to how she looked in the
morning. He claimed they had discussed the book she was holding. He knew
she'd read it.[23]
Sinclaire's story is not a self-serving fantasy. Most of the newspaper
accounts credit him with the discovery. Albin Krebs, then of the Herald
Tribune, cited the hairdresser in his story. Krebs subsequently recalled,
"I'm certain I got the information from a family source, possibly the
husband."[24]
The Journal-American, which presumably had an inside line, published two
versions on consecutive days. Its first breaking story, on November 8,
reported, "She was found by a maid who went to wake her about noon." On
November 9, they wrote, "She was found dead when her hairdresser arrived at
12:45 P.m."
Whatever the ramifications, his own accounts and the confirmations within
newspaper stories that relied on primary sources place Sinclaire at the house
and right in the maelstrom of the death events. He is mentioned nowhere in
the official reports. Neither of the investigators from the 19th Precinct
whom I interviewed remembered his presence. He was not questioned. James
Clement denied all.[25]
Then there appeared to have been more physicians at the scene than
circumstances required. Heller, of course, is all over the official records
as the physician who pronounced right after Marie's discovery. Dr. David
Baldwin, however, told Kerry Kollmar that he pronounced late in the
afternoon. Baldwin was exceedingly fond of Dorothy, had been treating her for
some time, and remains the Kilgallen family physician. It is unlikely that he
could have been mistaken about what must have been an event of such impact.
Kerry spoke with Baldwin on January 17, 1978, and wrote to me that same day:
During my conversation with Baldwin this afternoon, he definitely indicated
that he had been called onto the scene, and had, upon arrival, pronounced my
mother dead. During a subsequent phone call he told me that he had no
knowledge that Dr. Heller was apparently also there. I am almost certain that
he told me that he was called by my father.
The remarkable plan could have produced a series of genuinely misled and
soothsaying witnesses. Marc Sinclaire was obviously meant to think that he
was the first to discover Dorothy's body. Baldwin was probably being used to
authenticate an alternative version of events. For some reason, the cabal was
aborted, leaving only bizarre clutter. Marie Eichler, aka Eicher, became the
discoverer of record. Sinclaire disappeared from the official version without
leaving so much as a hairpin. Baldwin is nowhere recorded as having been on
the scene.
As we shall see, there exists the possibility that a second medical examiner
also entered the picture.
What happened to Dorothy?
If official records tell nothing else-nothing about the event that is
investigated—there are certain pro forma requirements that result in a mirror
reflection of the investigation itself. This is the first defense of any
bureaucracy. Narcissus with camera and stopwatch, covering his vitals.
The documents that relate to the investigation of Dorothy's death are unusual
in this regard.
Manhattan homicide possibly appeared on the scene. A Supplementary Complaint
Report signed by homicide detective Peter McPartland indicates that he was
informed at 1 P.M. There is no datum revealing how he came to know or what he
did once he knew. Nor will he elucidate. A letter to McPartland was not
answered.,
A second detective with the New York Homicide Squad, Raymond Seiler, is cited
in the records as having witnessed the autopsy. Seiler wrote to me in March,
1977:
If the family had any doubts as to the cause of death of Dorothy Kilgallen
they would have contacted me years ago. . . . Your enclosure by Liz Smith
gave me the inference that your possible suspects will be Castro, CIA, or
FBI. Ridiculous! . . . As far as intense public interest in the death of
Dorothy Kilgallen—this can only be generated by poorly informed people making
a mystery out of it.[26]
Detective Seiler was unable to lunch.
If he and his colleagues at homicide were informed at 1 P.M., they must have
done something to presume that no foul play had been involved in the death.
There is no indication of how the Medical Examiner's office came to know. The
autopsy report states that the ME was informed at 2:45. Records do not
indicate by whom. Luke suggested that "it must have been by the police."[27]
But which police?
The chains, the traceries, the linkages by which responsibility can be
imputed, by which a linear reconstruction of the investigation can be made,
are all absent from the official reports. Odd.
We do know, however, that 3:20 P. M. is the time when the 19th Precinct
admitted to having been informed. They could hardly have done otherwise.
Things were beginning to heat up. Word had already leaked to the media.
CBS-TV was poised to go with the story, which they had ripped off the UPI
wire. Marlin Swing was working at CBS. He was asked by the network to call
the house and confirm the story that his dear friend had died.
"May I speak to Miss Kilgallen?" he asked, praying that it was all a gruesome
mistake.
Marlin thought he was talking to Anne Hamilton; Anne Hamilton denied it.
"She's not here at the moment," a voice from 45 East Sixty-eighth Street
responded. "May I have her call you back?"[28]
By the time the phone call was made, Dorothy had been multiply discovered,
police and ME were alerted, and the first signs of lividity had set in.
CBS went with the unconfirmed report.
Things being as public as they were, Dr. Heller telephoned the ME's office to
report his pronouncement—"app. natural in bed—at 3:12.29
The most significant pro forma omission, as we shall see, related to the
vouchering of physical evidence found at the scene. The "Police Manual" is
very specific about this procedure in any suspicious death. And the death at
home of a young and healthy person is ipso facto suspicious. The manual
mandates: "The Medical Examiner shall take possession of any portable object
which, in his opinion, may be useful in establishing the cause of death."
What happened to Dorothy?
It was John Doyle of the 19th who headed the police investigation, or thought
he had. He was clearly a man to see.
I interviewed the ex-cop, now the owner of Doyle's Terrace Restaurant in La
Grangeville, New York, at his establishment. It is fifteen minutes short of
apple-picking country, along Dutchess County's Route 55. His afternoon
regulars were gathered around the bar watching "The Gong Show" on a large
color set, badly tuned and blaring. Doyle is a trim blue-eyed man. He wore
polyester, open at the neck.
John Doyle was not an easy man to locate. The pension section of the New York
City Police Department had no forwarding address for him, which enabled their
representatives to claim that they hadn't a clue. Doyle's whereabouts were on
record, however. It was a matter of retrieving through the department's back
door. The pension section had no official record of him because be had no
pension. Doyle resigned from the department, after thirteen years of active
duty, in March, 1966, four months after Dorothy died. He explained, "I found
I was married to the force rather than to my wife and six children."[30}
His memories of November 8 were vivid. There had been a $400,000 heist at the
Sherry-Netherland and a burglary at Delmonico's. He was assigned to both
cases and then had to testify in court. When he returned to the station
house, after three that Monday, his commanding officer, Mike Ward, dispatched
him to the house on East Sixty-eighth Street. "Ward found out about Dorothy's
death while watching television at the precinct," Doyle recalled.
Ward's memory of the informing process differed: "I heard from the chief of
detectives, who might have gotten it from the media "I Ward said in a
telephone interview. "The chief called and asked, 'Did something happen to
Dorothy Kilgallen?'"[31]
Doyle and his partner, Jimmy Greene, now deceased, proceeded to the house.
Doyle was annoyed: "Supposedly they found her between twelve and one and
nobody was notified as far as the police department was concerned until after
three."
When he arrived, Jimmy Kilgallen was there, Myrtle Verne, Joan Crawford,
Marie Eichler, James and Evelyn Clement, and Richard Kollmar: "In no shape or
form. He was completely inebriated. I don't even think he knew his own name."
Jill and Larry Grossman showed up afterward. Heller had left. Doyle took his
only formal statement from Marie. He did not remember seeing either Marc
Sinclaire or David Baldwin.
Doyle went up to the third-floor bedroom: "She must have fallen asleep while
she was reading, in a half-sitting position. The reading light was still on."
At Doyle's Terrace, the man who headed the investigation of what he termed "a
very important DOA" delivered a bombshell, which he rapidly detonated: "We
were waiting for the ME to show up. She was in bed. And next to the bed was
an empty vial that had been previously filled with Seconal."
He and his partner took down all the salient information from the label and
went to the Hunter Pharmacy on Madison Avenue, where, he somehow determined,
"she had all her prescriptions filled." The bottle had contained fifty
100-milligram Seconal tablets and it was dated October 8, 1965:
I remember going through all the Seconal prescriptions that she had for
approximately three, four years. And when I added up the Seconals and the
amount of years, it came out to two a night. Even when she went abroad. If
she was away for thirty days, she'd get sixty Seconal.
Utilizing this one and only police procedure and standard short division,
Doyle closed the case in his mind. She had taken, he concluded, no more than
two pills. He did not apparently consider that she lived in a house of pills
("If we'd asked to search Kollmar's bedroom, he would have had a fit"), that
she could easily have had more than one prescription active at various
drugstores, that she might have been saving a few for a special occasion,
that there might have been nights when she took no pills, that the October
8—November 8 symmetry was perhaps as suspect as the orderliness of the room.
Her confinements, he somehow learned, were for "alcoholism" and not
barbiturate abuse—slurring, ataxic gait, and the common knowledge of her
intimate friends, notwithstanding.
I have never considered two Seconals an overdose of barbiturates," he said.
"As far as I was concerned, that's all she took."
The presence of the empty vial was confirmed by Mike Ward directly and by Dr.
James Luke indirectly. Luke could not recall whether he actually took
physical possession of the vial.[32] The drug was prescribed by David
Baldwin, however, and the autopsy report states that Luke telephoned Baldwin,
who deposed that she was "habituated to Seconal—took 3-4 a day."[33] During
our phone conversation, Luke surmised, "I must have seen the vial if I made
the call."
The vial should have gone to the morgue with Dorothy. Its discovery should
have appeared on both the autopsy report and the police reports as "physical
evidence found at the scene." Empty barbiturate bottles naturally have high
probative value.
Richard Kollmar took his own life in January, 1971, swallowing everything in
reach. He was also found in the "neat, tidy, expensive townhouse" (which he
had sold and then bought back); he was also "supine in bedclothes" (probably
in the same room in which Dorothy had been discovered). His death, like hers,
came some time after a fall at home that resulted in a fractured shoulder.
His death, too, was reported amiably at first as an "apparent heart
attack."[34]
However, there was an empty vial by his bedside which did not go unreported.
In fact, the one and only underscored notation by the medical investigator
who came to call was: "Found with empty pill vial at bedside." Dorothy's vial
should have been similarly noted and vouchered. A scrupulous, hand-to-hand
record of the evidence and its disposition should have been maintained so
that responsibility could be imputed for its loss.
None of this was done.
Doyle maintained that he reported the discovery of the bottle and the
pertinent procedure on his police report: "I'm sure I made a note of it on my
DD 5." The DD 5 is a supplementary complaint report that records activities
pursuant to a complaint. There was no such DD 5 of Doyle's in the file, which
was presented to me as complete by the New York City Police Department. When
I queried an administrative assistant to Commander Schimmel about Doyle's
assertion that he found the vial, went to the pharmacy, and put it all down
on his report, I was told, "I don't think the detective was right in his
recollection,"[35] as though the absence of a record betokened the absence of
a reality. Such a detailed recollection, however, could not be a mistake. If
Doyle filed it, the document was conveniently lost; if he did not, he was
clearly negligent.
The vial evaporated. A careful review of Dorothy's case records from the
medical examiner's office showed no indication that the evidence was ever
officially received.[36]
Detective John Doyle was either a man who would not allow himself to be
confused by the facts or a man to whom the facts were never accurately
presented.
"She wasn't long for this world to begin with," he said, the liver being the
way it was."
The autopsy showed clearly that Dorothy's liver, though fatty, was not
cirrhotic. She wasn't drinking hard enough long enough.
Doyle claimed, in conclusion, that he received a document from the medical
examiner's office that attributed the death to visceral congestion:
All I got from the ME's office was a slip of paper saying "death due to
visceral congestion." No more detailed report than that. If there was any
cover-up on this whatsoever, it would have been down at the ME's office.
Luke responded to Doyle's assertion about receiving such a slip:
I wouldn't have sent him anything like that. "Visceral congestion" is not a
term I would use, and it was not the cause of death.[37]
Doyle insisted that he never saw the complete report:
They never went into detail. Had it been explained to me that there was an
overly amount of barbiturates in the system then I probably would have dug a
little deeper. There was no indication at all that there was anything out of
the ordinary.
Luke maintained:
We would have a great deal of information exchanged between the investigator
and the medical examiner's office. I can't believe this case was finally
certified without having discussed it with them. It would have been discussed
with the police.
The complexity of the thing becomes unseemly. There appears to have been
official malfeasance in addition to stupidity. The one document that could
have verified or rebutted Doyle's story that he received a slip of paper
ascribing the death to visceral congestion-the so-called DD 15 or Request of
Cause of Death from the ME's office-is also absent from the ostensibly
complete file of the New York City Police Department.
Why does Doyle continue to insist on "visceral congestion," insist that the
slip was filed by him, when he could as easily have taken the actual data,
the "moderate" designation of Luke's, still called it an accident, still
justified his failure to investigate? Why does he insist that the liver was
cirrhotic according to his information, when I am clearly in possession of a
document that contradicts that determination? Is it possible that he is
truthful and accurate? Is it possible that the only real communication that
transpired between the police and the ME's office was unofficial and that
Doyle himself was disinformed? That both Doyle and Luke are covering nothing
and that communication was transpiring on another level-between some
earlier-arriving police and another representative of the New York medical
examiner's office?
Whether Doyle's obtuse surmise that Dorothy had taken only two Seconal was
actually buttressed by a communication from the medical examiner's office or
not, the effect on the investigation was devastating. No attempt was made to
elicit information about Dorothy's activities on the night of her death.
There remains only one deposition on record-the testimony of Richard Kollmar
to the medical examiner, under "Witnesses or Informants" on the autopsy
report:
According to husband, deceased had been well recently. Had not seen physician
since Fr. [fractured] shoulder last year. . . . Returned from "What's My
Line" last P.M. 11:30 P.m. "feeling chipper." Went in to write column.
Husband said goodnight and went to bed. No past history alcoholism or other
medicinal habits.[38]
Doyle knew better. Ward knew different. Richard told Doyle that he did not
see her when she came in that night. He told Ward that she came in late and
that they had had a drink together.[39]
The perjured testimony was tolerated.
Doyle determined that it was Dorothy's custom to go out after the show for a
few drinks, usually to P. J. Clarke's. No one at Clarke's was questioned.
Neighbors were not interviewed about whether they saw or heard anything
untoward at the house that night.
Bob Bach was never asked any questions about Dorothy.
Doyle was unaware of her visit to the Regency Lounge.
And I have been expressly forbidden by the management of the hotel to
question any of their employees, including the bartender who probably served
her that night and who might have identified the person or persons she was
with just hours before her death.
What happened to Dorothy?
Anything could have and been swallowed up in the frenetic efforts of the
sentinels at the house. In addition to the overproduction of witnesses, a
good deal of overexplaining issued from 45 East Sixty-eighth Street. Anne
Hamilton spoke to James and Evelyn Clement on the telephone that Monday, she
claimed, and to the rest of the family on blackout Tuesday. She never spoke
directly to Marie-who was "gone" by then-but she was eagerly proffered a
story that explained every detail of the bizarre condition in which the
householders found Dorothy.
Dorothy was, they said, expecting "photographers." They were scheduled to
appear in the morning to take her picture in connection with a movie deal
involving Murder One. The interested party was not Joe Levine, but Twentieth
Century-Fox.
"Marie thought Dorothy was asleep," Anne recapitulated.
She was leaning back, with her eyes closed, almost with a smile on her face.
Finally, it got so late, so close to photography, that Marie went over to her
for the first time. Then there was the realization.
But you see why she was already made-up. It was for the photographers. She
hadn't gone to bed at all. She was just resting, keyed up, probably couldn't
sleep. I suspect she took one of Dick's pills and a sip of drink. That did
it. That and the excitement.[40]
When Anne spoke directly to Richard on the day Dorothy reposed at the Abbey,
he added yet another detail. She had decided to screen Sunday night's "What's
My Line?" right after the show was over. Dorothy was so happy with what she
saw, with how smart she had been and how pretty she looked, that she couldn't
possibly have done anything destructive to herself.
The stories are, of course, outlandish. A television pro, Dorothy would never
have prepared herself for a photography session wearing day-old makeup. Nor
would she have appointed to have her hair done after an early-morning
photography session. And she never looked at "What's My Line?" that night.
Bob Bach took her directly to Clarke's, where she was seen by at least two
employees at a little after eleven. Poor Richard, whose services were no
longer required on Broadway, was still engaging in overproduction.
There were lies for insiders, lies for outsiders, lies for the medical
examiner.
But the story of the reposeful accident becomes totally incredible in the
light of expert testimony on what was actually found in her body. She had no
"little accident" involving fifteen pills, which was the low figure given to
me by Baden and assented by Hoffman and which did not include the pink
liquid. Luke had estimated that she died between two and four A.M., Monday
morning.[41] Even if she somehow slipped past Harvey Daniels and arrived home
from the Regency as early as one o'clock, there was no time for the
traditional fugal blunder, taking, say, five pills thrice as a result of
stupor or impatience. Assuming there were only ten pills, it is very hard
even to believe that she would have ingested five pills twice in so short a
period of time.
Home at one, dead between two and four, a minimum of fifteen pills? The fugue
death is simply not played in this major key.
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
