Marilyn: Suicide or Accident?

I don’t quite agree with writer Susan Baskin that Marilyn Monroe wanted her life to end (“Marilyn & Me,” Aug. 2). I can’t believe that any woman would want a group of strangers--including the police, undoubtedly mostly men --to find her naked body. Would someone as famous as Monroe want to be in the headlines under such circumstances?

I don’t think so.

Monroe left no suicide note. But perhaps she realized that she took too many pills. The telephone was not far from her hand; she might have tried to call for help.

Or she might have been a victim of confusion. Perhaps she took her regular sleeping pills, then showered and made a phone call or two, finally forgetting that she took the pills earlier and taking more of them, accidentally overdosing.

The likelihood of that having taken place makes more sense to me than the scenario of a deliberate suicide, without a note and with total disregard about the condition in which she’d be found.

Sure sounds accidental to me.

Marcie Cohen

Costa Mesa

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Why the carnations next to Monroe’s crypt? I thought Joe DiMaggio had paid for a rose to be kept next to her “forever.”

Tony Stypinski

Beverly Hills

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Monroe was a “starlet,” according to the magazine’s table of contents. I guess by your standards her two husbands were a scribbler and a baseball journeyman.

Alexander Auerbach

Sherman Oaks