The retired detective who tracked down the Golden State Killer now says the original investigation into Marilyn Monroe's 1962 death was riddled with problems, from staged-looking pill bottles to missing forensic evidence that should have prompted harder questions six decades ago.
Paul Holes, the cold case investigator whose DNA work led to the arrest of serial killer Joseph James DeAngelo in 2018, has turned his forensic eye to one of Hollywood's most enduring mysteries. His conclusion: the scene where Monroe was found dead does not look like a straightforward overdose, and the investigators who processed it failed to document what mattered.
Monroe was found dead in her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home on August 4, 1962. The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled her death a probable suicide by barbiturate poisoning. An empty bottle that once held 50 Nembutal capsules was recovered at the scene. That ruling has stood for more than 60 years.
Holes, however, identified what he calls "red flags" in the single existing photograph of the death scene, as detailed in a report by The Sun. The pill bottles on Monroe's nightstand appear perfectly arranged, with labels facing forward. The bedsheets look neat and orderly. To Holes, that picture clashes with what a lethal barbiturate overdose typically produces.
Holes put it bluntly in his assessment, as reported by the New York Post:
"People who are going to ingest that number of pills at once don't typically take that kind of care to tidy up before they lie down on the bed. It's what I call an inconsistency."
Someone swallowing 50 capsules in a single act, Holes reasoned, would not pause to straighten bottle labels and smooth sheets. The physical scene suggests either a different sequence of events or third-party involvement.
The forensic gap that troubles Holes most is biological, not visual. Monroe's autopsy found no barbiturate residue in her stomach, despite the empty Nembutal bottle found nearby. If she swallowed 50 capsules, some trace of the gelatin casings or undissolved drug material would normally remain in the stomach lining.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has offered an explanation: the drugs may have been fully absorbed into Monroe's bloodstream and liver before death. Holes has not dismissed that theory outright, but he treats it as one possibility among several rather than a settled answer.
Toxicology results confirmed two substances in Monroe's system: Nembutal, a powerful barbiturate, and chloral hydrate, a sedative sometimes called "knockout drops." Holes and his team uncovered a June 1962 prescription for chloral hydrate signed by Monroe's personal physician, Dr. Hyman Engelberg. That prescription raises its own questions about the medical care Monroe was receiving in the final weeks of her life and whether her doctors understood the risks of combining those drugs.
Holes has pointed to sloppy police work as a compounding problem. Only one photograph of the death scene is known to exist. Modern homicide protocols call for extensive photographic documentation from multiple angles, along with detailed sketches and measurements. The 1962 investigation produced almost none of that.
That thin evidence trail makes it far harder to reconstruct what actually happened in Monroe's bedroom. Holes has said the investigation "should've been different," a point he expanded on in a Fox News appearance where he argued that alternate theories surrounding Monroe's death deserve renewed scrutiny rather than reflexive dismissal.
Holes addressed the counterargument head-on. If someone staged the scene to look like a suicide, why would they arrange it so neatly that it raises suspicion?
"Nobody stages a suicide to look like a better suicide."
His point: the tidiness of the scene does not prove staging, but it does not fit the expected physical reality of a massive pill ingestion either. That tension, in Holes's view, is exactly what competent investigators should have explored at the time.
Holes has also flagged potentially unreleased FBI documents as an investigative avenue that remains unexplored. The FBI maintained files on Monroe during her lifetime, partly because of her connections to President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Whether those files contain material relevant to the circumstances of her death is unknown. Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether all FBI records related to Monroe have been fully declassified and released.
The new examination is part of a FOX special titled "Celebrity Crime Scene: Marilyn Monroe," which Holes is co-hosting. The show applies modern forensic standards to the original evidence. Holes brings credibility that few television investigators can match. His work on the Golden State Killer case used investigative genetic genealogy to identify DeAngelo after decades of dead ends, a breakthrough that reshaped American law enforcement's approach to cold cases.
If the Monroe case were reopened under modern protocols, investigators would need to resolve several core questions. They would need to determine how Monroe ingested a lethal dose of barbiturates without leaving stomach residue. They would need to account for the presence of chloral hydrate alongside Nembutal and whether the combination points to self-administration or something else. They would need to identify who had access to Monroe's home in the hours before her death and whether any witnesses were inadequately interviewed.
Investigators would also need to determine whether the single death scene photograph accurately represents the room as first responders found it, or whether the scene was altered before documentation. The 1962 investigation left that question wide open.
None of this amounts to proof of foul play. Holes has not claimed it does. What he has said is that the original investigation lacked the rigor to rule foul play out, and that the physical evidence contains inconsistencies that a competent modern inquiry would not ignore.
Monroe's death has generated conspiracy theories for more than six decades, ranging from mob involvement to political assassination. Holes's contribution is different in kind. He is not spinning theories from speculation. He is applying the same forensic methodology that solved one of California's most notorious serial murder cases to a set of facts that, in his professional judgment, do not support the tidy conclusion the original investigators reached.
The Los Angeles County Coroner's "probable suicide" ruling has never been formally revised. No law enforcement agency has announced plans to reopen the case. The DA's office has offered explanations for the forensic anomalies but has not initiated a new review.
When the investigator who caught the Golden State Killer says a death scene has red flags, the honest response is not to litigate his motives. It is to ask why those flags went unexamined for 60 years.
