PEOPLE Explains: All About Marilyn Monroe's Alleged Affairs with JFK and Brother Bobby

The world lost a luminous legend of the big screen when Marilyn Monroe died at 36 on Aug. 5, 1962, of a barbiturate overdose.

Although Monroe's death was officially ruled a "probable suicide" by the Los Angeles County coroner's office, suspicion has surrounded her untimely passing ever since. Some have even speculated that her alleged affairs with President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, just over a year after Monroe's death, and his brother, Attorney Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, may have played a role.

Before she died, Monroe's personal life was in shambles: She married and divorced three times, and many believe she had or was still having affairs with both Kennedy brothers. It was reported that she had threatened to hold a press conference divulging her relationships with them.

Rumors about Monroe's alleged affair with JFK were spurred in part by her sultry "Happy Birthday" performance for the commander-in-chief at his 45th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962, just months before the Hollywood icon's death.

A rare photo taken after the performance during a party at the home of movie executive Arthur Krim is reportedly the only known image of either Kennedy with Monroe.

White House photographer Cecil Stoughton, who took the photo, kept it a secret for decades before releasing it in 2010.

"What happened to Marilyn Monroe is one of the great mysteries of the 20th century," her biographer James Spada told PEOPLE in 2012, ahead of the 50th anniversary of Monroe's death.

Although Spada didn't believe there was proof that the Kennedys were responsible for Monroe's death, he said, "It was pretty clear that Marilyn had had sexual relations with both Bobby and Jack."

According to Spada, actor Peter Lawford introduced Monroe to JFK in 1954. However, when Kennedy tired of her, he passed her off to his brother. This happened, according to Spada, in the spring of 1962. Witnesses claim to have heard a disturbing tape from the bugged Monroe home the night of her death, on which the voices of Lawford, an angry Bobby and a screaming Monroe are audible.

During a 1983 BBC interview that Monroe biographer Anthony Summers conducted with the actress' former live-in housekeeper, Eunice Murray, he said there was a "moment where she put her head in her hands and said words to the effect of, 'Oh, why do I have to keep covering this up?' I said, 'Covering what up, Mrs. Murray?' She said, 'Well, of course, Bobby Kennedy was there [on Aug. 4], and of course, there was an affair with Bobby Kennedy.' "

A so-called suicide squad was formed to investigate Monroe's death. According to Donald Wolfe, author of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, this squad never interviewed Murray, publicist Pat Newcomb, Lawford or any of the Kennedys. Biographer Summers said that "both the forensic work and the police investigations were hopelessly flawed."

Further fueling the theory that the Kennedys were involved in Monroe's death is the fact that a couple of the people close to the investigation were later given high-profile new jobs. Newcomb (who has never definitively spoken about Monroe's death) "was spirited off to [the Kennedy compound in] Hyannis Port," Michael Selsman, who worked for Monroe's publicist, told PEOPLE in 2012. "Six months later, she was awarded a job in the U.S. Information Agency in Washington, D.C."

Spada told PEOPLE "there had to have been" a Kennedy-related cover-up, though not necessarily of murder.

"The Kennedys could not risk this coming out because it could have brought down the president. But the cover-up that was designed to prevent anyone from finding out that Marilyn was involved intimately with the Kennedy family has been misinterpreted as a cover-up of their having murdered her," Spada said.

However, in 2021, Tony Oppedisano — a friend of Frank Sinatra and his former road manager — told PEOPLE, "She wasn't about to break up [the president's] marriage, so she wouldn't let it go that far, even if she felt that deeply."

In his 1997 book The Dark Side of Camelot, journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about the rumored affair between Monroe and JFK, saying the film star's "instability posed a constant threat" to the president before she mysteriously overdosed.

Jerry Blaine, a former Secret Service agent in the Kennedy detail, told PEOPLE that he was with JFK during two known encounters the president had with Monroe — one at Lawford's Santa Monica home in 1961 and another at the party in New York following the "Happy Birthday" performance.

"He probably thanked her for singing. But they weren't alone," said Blaine, who added that he "never saw any evidence of an affair … but I don't know what happened behind closed doors."

Monroe's second husband, baseball great Joe DiMaggio, blamed the Kennedys for her death, according to Dr. Rock Positano — who, along with brother John Positano, wrote the 2017 biography Dinner with DiMaggio: Memories of an American Hero.

"The whole lot of Kennedys were lady-killers, and they always got away with it," DiMaggio told Positano, according to the book, "They'll be getting away with it a hundred years from now."

The baseball star added, "I always knew who killed her, but I didn't want to start a revolution in this country. She told me someone would do her in, but I kept quiet."

DiMaggio also told Positano of the Kennedys: "They did in my poor Marilyn. She didn't know what hit her."

Positano clarified DiMaggio's statements in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE in May 2017.

"The understanding was that her involvement with … the Kennedy clan put her in a position where maybe it wasn't good for her mental health or her emotional health," Positano said. "He didn't think they were good people for her to be around."

The 2022 Netflix documentary The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes includes never-before-heard recordings of interviews with those close to the star who call into question much of what we've been told about the night she died. The interviews had been recorded by investigative journalist Anthony Summers, author of the bestselling book Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe.

According to the documentary, on Aug. 4, 1962, Robert and his family were in Northern California at the home of a family friend, attorney John Bates. Several sources in the film claim RFK visited Monroe in her Los Angeles home in the hours before she died to end their affair. The visit led to an intense argument, as reported by several of Summers' sources, some of whom were involved in the alleged wiretap operation at her home.

While the mystery surrounding her death may never be solved, Summers concludes in the Netflix documentary: "I did find evidence that the circumstances of her death had been deliberately covered up."

Summers added, "If you then say to me, 'Why were those circumstances covered up?' I would say that what the evidence suggests is that it was covered up because of her connection with the Kennedy brothers."

Though Summers thinks the Kennedy brothers were involved in the cover-up of Monroe's death, he does not suggest Monroe was murdered.

"There is no good evidence that she was murdered," he told PEOPLE. "I think Marilyn Monroe was overwrought about her relationships with both President Kennedy and his brother Robert, felt rejected by both men, had a heated argument with Robert when he visited the house and then whether as a cry for help or intending to kill herself, swallowed too many pills."

In the 2024 biography, The Fixer: Moguls, Mobsters, Movie Stars, and Marilyn, police officer and private detective Fred Otash's previously unreleased investigation files corroborate Monroe's affair with the Kennedys.

At the time, John borrowed the house of his brother-in-law, Peter Lawford (who Otash dubbed as "Jack Kennedy's sexual archivist") as a "de facto West Coast office, crash pad and Hollywood hospitality center."

Realizing the house was bugged, Otash "picked up the frequency and started recording" in a surveillance car nearby, with his associate John Danoff recording John having "sexual congress" with Monroe.

Otash later explained: "My job was to develop a file that would show Jack Kennedy to have serious moral failings. In other words, they wanted audiotapes of the guy f------ anyone other than his wife. I could make a file of any other sins I might discover, but adultery was enough to knock him out of the race."

Having also bugged Monroe's home, Otash learned the details of her final day.

"[Robert] f----- her around eleven o'clock that morning, and then he left," Otash said in a recording.

Once he returned, Monroe lashed out at Kennedy, "Where were you when I had to get an abortion of your kid, you no-good bastard?"

Although Robert promised Monroe to have dinner that night, he had no intention of seeing her again.

"Peter spirited him back to the area where the helicopter was waiting for him. He would be nowhere near Los Angeles when the news of her death broke," Otash said. "Bobby Kennedy could have saved her life, as far as I'm concerned."

According to Otlash, Monroe called Lawford twice, JFK once and then Lawford once more, telling him: "Say goodbye to Pat. Say goodbye to the president and say goodbye to yourself because you're a nice guy."

Upon receiving the call, Lawford rushed over to Monroe's home and realized she was dead, then "started rummaging around, trying to pick all the s--- he could that would implicate anyone."