Marilyn Monroe's Last Letter.

Marilyn Monroe

In the summer of 1996, came a sequence of episodes, that by themselves, were but vignettes of short sell-by date: of interest to only those involved. However, when strung together, they imply that an act of murder occurred. It began the day I came upon Marilyn Monroe's letter.

I was rummaging through the art materials of Javier de Murga, in his Estepona studio. My excuse is that I was curious about his way of painting. I wanted to appraise the materials that he used, his techniques on canvas, etc. Javier's being out somewhere made it the moment to do this. Besides, Javier himself searched through my own possessions when I was away in England. He told me that he read my playscript 'Minotaur'. Indeed, it was he who suggested I change the title.

"Call it Picasso,' he said as he sucked his pipe. He pondered awhile longer, then clarified his reasoning. 

"It will attract a larger audience, but mind, I'll want my name on the script and go fifty-fifty on the profit!" 

Ah, I do so miss the great man.

But I digress. After that incident, namely of artists not having secrets from fellow artists, especially ones sharing digs, my conscience was clear to... let's say, explore the rudiments of Don Javier de Murga's art.

Thus it was, as I inspected his box of paints and crayons, I came across a letter, franked with a US stamp. Unfolding the creases, I read. It was from a lady distraught. Phrases such as, "being used" and "...bastard brothers..." remain in my memory. I noted the woman signed herself "Marilyn". Carefully, I folded the letter, placed it back in its envelope and went back to examining his canvases and tools. Not for an instant did I connect the name with Marilyn Monroe. Why on earth would I?

It was some time later before the veil of ignorance lifted. That came the night of my theatre show. Produced and directed by Miguel Ponce, the presentation of my theatre piece 'Minotaur' took place in Marbella's 'Parque de la Constitucion. It was Thursday 22nd August, 1996 and I was on a cloud of delight.

Javier attended the show and afterwards joined us at our 'after' party, hosted by Miguel on his crumbling balcony. We sat tight bunched, like poseurs in a Beryl Cook painting. Miguel, emperor of affairs, sat tight-thighed beside young Carlitos, bookended on the other thigh by Rafiq, a young Arab whom he had espied in the audience during the show. Squeezed in at the rusty, loose balustrade end of our regal platform sat Javier and myself. The rest of the cast had to make do with the spacious apartment to our rear. 

The cheap, plastic table shook our drinks with each and every breath drawn by our cosy ensemble. To each and every self congratulatory comment. Javier was amused to see me basking in what, I since realise was only a pale moon's glory. However, it was my first work to have been stage produced so, it still merits the plaudit. 

"Your first play, produced," said he, sagely nodding the head. "Pity there was not an audience to view it."
"There was an audience," I haughtly retorted.
"Hmmm. Whom we awoke. Which speaks well of your work's potential," he replied. "There are many that perform to the opposite affect".
"They were British. They understood what I was saying," I floundered.
"They were drunk," clarified Javier.
"One was Arab," piped Miguel. 
His falsetto laughter caused our flutes of cava to depart the table as it went into spasm. A squeeze from Miguel's wandering hand on Rafiq's thigh kept me from securing the plastic vessels from the floor.

Miquel flapped a hand.

“Los siento, caballeros... distinguished guests. But be content, for we have more. Enough to bathe in, if we don't drink it all beforehand." 

His laughter went up an octave and I made a mental note to self. 

"Do not get paralytic this evening".

"Hmmm," Javier voiced in my ear.

I must have shown some shock on my face for as Miguel sent Carlito to provide us with new drinks, he whispered in my ear,

“You’re too old to be raped.”

Two flutes and an unopened bottle of Freixenet brut wended its way to us. Javier was meanwhile slicing a 'Romeo and Julliet' with his cutter. He only ever smoked cigars when being distinguished became his presence, I found. Only when he had lit his cigar did he continue his critique.

"The cast and our own numbers made for half the audience." 
He waived his hand up and down gently, as was his habit when I became perturbed. 
"It was simply an observation. A statement of fact. You learnt much more about your work through this than what a reading would have provided. But it remains..."
I was aware of the background music for all the troupe were listening. Miquel and his cohorts leant into me as we waited on Javier’s pregnant pause.
“…Not completely formed. Like a baby with two heads and too many limbs".
The balcony and apartment pondered this image.
"Una araña," piped up Carlitos.
"With two heads," replied Rafiq. "Hombre! Who ever saw an ankabūt with two heads!"
Miquel giggled and squeezed them quiet.
"Nothing like a spider." 
He shook his head at their misinterpretation and winked at my stern visage. 
"Like Javier said. A baby. Simply a malformed child,” he said reassuringly.
"Thank you, Miguel, for clearing up the mistranslation,” I huffed. “All that remains is do I finish my drink before or after slitting my wrists!”
Miquel made small bird tuttering noises in his throat and cooed me to calm.
“No, no, no, me querido. Oh, but what Javier means is simply that your great, magnificent piece still needs a bit more work. That’s all.” 
He placed a hand on my arm.
“For yours is a play that possesses that rare thing. The potential to become a masterpiece. I can see theatres and open spaces filling with audiences clambering for seats and merchandise. It is... maravilloso. Quite beyond, querido. Beyond all else.”
Javier placed his hand on my other arm.
"This work is the work of genius. I cannot detract from what it portrays. There are aspects to it, in its visual form, that are great. It is the tidying up of the piece that I suggest you attend to. It needs tightening."
Miguel chipped in.
"Work in progress. A draft. You can finish it. Then we'll put on another show. To a larger audience," he enthused. “Now quickly,” he stage whispered Carlito, “More cava. Tending sensitive playwrights I find, fast empties the flute". 

Javier reflected on another 'after' party occasion, "A proper one," he told us, when he was in London in 1953. He was a guest celebrating at a party thrown by Terence Rattigan and Laurence Olivier. Javier told me that he was sitting at a table with Peggy Ashcroft, David Niven and Marilyn Monroe... and that it was through this meeting with Marilyn that they became close friends. 

A little known fact about their friendship.

Javier and +Hugh Hefner were friends. Hearing that Javier was friendly with Marilyn and knowing Javier was a talented artist in both paint and with camera, Hefner asked if Javier would care to direct the photo shoot with Marilyn for the first issue of +Playboy. For whatever reason though, Javier turned the offer down.

Marilyn on Heffner's first issue of 'Playboy'

Though Marilyn was living in Hollywood, following a hectic ritual of photo shoots, parties and filming schedules, and Javier was travelling about Europe and the Middle East, the pair maintained an irregular correspondence.

Javier told how me Marilyn was a beautiful person, but that she ended up being corrupted by the Kennedy brothers. He spat vile about them. He told me John Kennedy had had an affair with her, then passed her on to his brother, Robert Kennedy. Both men had abused her. Marilyn became distressed and depressed as a result.

I asked Javier whether he thought it was this depression that caused her to commit suicide.

"She was murdered!" he retorted. "She wrote to me the day before she died... I should know what was happening ...No, she was killed by those who wanted to protect the President and his brother. The authorities... the CIA and the FBI... they knew that a letter had been sent to me. They didn't know what was in it. I returned home one time to discover the house that I was staying at had been ransacked. They were searching for the letter."

"What did you do with it?" I asked. 

He sucked long on his pipe before responding.

"I destroyed it".

Javier de Murga at work in his studio

Conversation turned to other topics and I gave the matter no more thought. Then a few days later I had a lucid moment, whilst I lay half awake in bed. The letter amongst Javier's paints... that was Marilyn Monroe last letter! I laughed and thought about going to confirm this. However, on reflection, I decided to leave it. Her words were quite possibly the last ones that she had penned. Also, she had addressed the letter, "My Dear friend, Javier..."

“Best leave some secrets be,” I thought.

Honour Amidst Detraction

Through my experiences managing workshops and events, I can say that community development is a long process. For it to succeed, a degree of self awareness must develop within the individual, sufficient for him or her to want to engage others in dialogue about a community concern. With the refugees, whom I worked with in Birmingham, this concern focused a lot on the desire to be accepted: to be seen as honourable, honest people and not the work shy-job stealing, mixed message, stereo types, depicted by British tabloid media. Self awareness allows self enablement of the individual, which in turn, allows the opportunity for politicisation of the wider community. By politicising in this way, minorities within a community can find a communal voice and so affect positive change to their advantage. The principles of mutual respect and social justice for all must be adhered too. Whilst society's civilised values of fairness, equality, accountability, opportunity, choice, participation, mutuality, reciprocity and continuous learning are accepted as the norms in the client-facilitator relationship.

New Mexico Mystery

I am reminded of something - an experience - that I've been unable to investigate as fully as I would wish. This concerns an event that occurred in 1993 on a flight from Dallas to Sacramento. I had only been in the USA for a short while. Everything was new. Exciting. I was all eyes and ears about! This flight would take me over the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert and I was looking forward to my bird's eye view of both these and the Indian territories en route. The first part of the flight had me agog at the sights of Texas below. Fantastic! However, interesting as it all was, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing, that is until we flew over Farmington - north New Mexico. At the time, I knew nothing about the names or background of places below me. What was apparent though was that flight crews follow a regular route that goes landmark to landmark. I made a mental note of the places that stood out and the pilot's commentaries since I was determined to trace the route later on a map. Our flight passed Farmington and up the San Juan valley and then, it happened.

An intense energy spike came up from beneath the plane. I swiftly glanced about the cabin, certain that this 'jolt' to my system must have affected others but, no-one in the plane reacted. I was now feeling a most powerful sensation within me. It was a charge of intense energy. I turned to the window, searching out the source of this queer feeling. It was definitely coming from the ground. I expected there to be some striking visual landmark below. However, what my eye gleaned was ugliness. There was nothing beautiful on the ground. Long, ugly scars and spoil heaps described the despoiled landscape for as far as my eye could rove through the thickened perspex of my window. I was perplexed. Again, I intensely scanned the landscape for some clue to this phenomenon. There were large earth moving vehicles in the distance and - given the angle from my seat - I saw a non-descript town was below. The energy spike lasted a few more seconds then, faded. The rest of the journey was uneventful and I got on with my life, forgetting all about this weirdness.

Then in 2006, I awoke one morning thinking about this. There was no reason for me to be stimulated in thought over this event. After all of 13 years! I was living in Oxford, England and done with the USA. I think it was to do with the Google Earth facility that I had used the day before. This possibly stimulated my thoughts on the topic ...and then there was the Internet tool for researching this further and suddenly, I was investigating.

I soon found the hot spot's locale: where the spike of energy occurred, but the statistics I was going by first: I was 33,000 feet up, seated on the starboard side of a commercial airliner going to Sacramento from Dallas. The large machinery that I saw were operating at an opencast mine on the northern side of the San Juan valley. From the maps and my memory picture, I vector the San Juan river bending through a slight pince in the terrain. I could not see the terrain immediately below. This was the land out of sight beneath the aircraft's fuselage. Research allowed me to discover that the mine and large swathes of land all about this place belong to the Navajo Tribal peoples. At the time of this blog, the 'Google Earth' pics fall right on the divide here between a focused shot and one not. The spike started in the unfocused zone. I suspect my angle of vision was 50 degrees at the lowest viewpoint from the aircraft. I suspect that if anyone was going to hide a site of great power, where better than in such ugly surrounds. Perhaps the Navajo mine protects untouched, sacred ground close to the river. The Anasazi circles I saw just prior to Farmington airport. Maybe another such site lies in Upper Fruitland.

Murder and Digestifs

Javier de Murga

I have a tale to tell. A true one, describing indifference to human suffering. Misogyny. Murder. A true tale, in that I have no reason to doubt the man who told it to me that evening in Spain. As +Javier de Murga was not one to shirk from telling a truth to your face, so neither was he a man to tell a lie behind your back: he was prone to neither exaggeration or lies, unless it was to save a man's life, as I shall tell. The truth then, whether you believe it or not.

May, 1996. Javier and I were sharing an apartment in Estepona, southern Spain. We had been following a particularly gruesome news story for a few days concerning three teenage girls who had been abducted and murdered. All three were found buried in a field near Valencia. Each had been raped. Two had been decapitated. The third teenager, whose body was found rolled in a rug, had had her throat cut. The Spanish public were outraged. The police soon captured a youth – a thirteen year old - and claimed they had one of the murderers. A second youth - the eighteen year old leader - vanished. However, the prosecution soon realised it had no case against the young man in custody: he could not have raped the women since he was not yet producing semen of his own. Further, multiple semen samples were taken from their bodies. All that the youth could tell the police was that his friend had arranged to find young women for some men whom, he himself, had never met. To then deliver the women to these men and get paid for the task. He never saw the exchange. Nor had he seen his own friend since the bodies were discovered. It became clear that this child had not murdered these women; that he was a stooge.

It was a horrific tale but, such terrors occur. There then followed a most sinister twist, reported on the news. A senior police officer in the Guardia Civil had entered police headquarters and removed evidence: the same bloodstained rug that had been wrapped about one of the murdered women. This was no ordinary rug, but a fine Persian tapestry, one quite unique in design and weave. A most expensive luxury item that few but the very rich could afford. It was a crucial forensic piece of evidence, one that offered a strong lead to the weaver, the seller, the buyer, the murder scene and eventually, hopefully, the culprits. For a senior officer to remove evidence so brazenly was remarkable.

I said so to Javier, who sagely continued to chew on his empty pipe as we watched the news. Afterwards, he filled his pipe and, as he smoked, told me that this was not at all unusual where people corrupted by power and wealth were concerned ...and he told me a story, his story, of a murder most vile.

Back in the 1950's Javier left his art studio in Marbella to travel the Orient. Don Javier de Murga (to give him his title) was blue blooded: his father was the Marquis de Murga, from the Basque country. The title permitted doors to be opened more readily for Javier, allowing him access to the elite and wealthy. Thus it was that Javier found himself and other guests being entertained by a wealthy sheik prince, at his home in Iran. One day there was a commotion. A guest had made a sexual approach on a lady of the prince's household. This insult to the Prince's hospitality was unforgivable. The prince determined to have the male guest put to death. The man was to have his hands and feet cut off and cauterised then his body run through with a pointed stake. (Through the anus and out the throat.) Impaled on the stake so, the man would then be afixed in the central courtyard, where he would die a slow, cruel death in the sun.

On becoming aware of this, Javier requested a boon of the prince. Javier told him that this man had saved his life and that he wished the prince to release him from his sentence of death in light of this. The prince, impressed by Javier's mien and argument agreed and freed the perpetrator into Javier's custody. Javier and the man immediately left the Prince's estate.

The man thanked Javier profusely then, made him an offer. To travel with him to Switzerland where he would show him an elite circle of powerful men and provide him an insight into their nefarious activities. Activities no journalist had ever reported on. Intrigued, Javier agreed to go. So began a most harrowing adventure.

Javier's guide worked for the CIA. This permitted him access to persons of influence, those in power, especially. Thus, power brokers; wealthy entrepreneurs; bankers; arms traders; drugs barons; etc. knew him and the power behind him. The man was the CIA's representative in a global Power VIP network. In Switzerland, Javier was taken to a location (that he refused to give the location of) where he was introduced to a wealthy host and gathering of other men of power. It was a black tie occasion with fine food and wines, all silver service. After an excellent meal, the host directed his guests toward a glass wall cubicle set in the centre of the room. It was time for the after dinner entertainment. Javier described steps inside that cubicle that led to a room below the stone flag floor. A bed - its only furniture - was beside the opening. The guests arranged themselves about the outside of this 'fish tank', cigars and digestifs in hand. This arrangement allowed everyone to see the visages of his fellow guests. The spectacle then began. Up the steps, came two Negroid men and a Caucasian woman. They at first proceeded to entertain the on watchers with sexual acts, the woman very much controlling the scenarios on and about the bed. Then, it changed. The men started beating the woman with intense violence. She screamed for mercy. To her assailants. To the men watching beyond the glass. To no avail.

"Whatever you do, make sure you smile," said the CIA man in an aside to Javier, "else you'll find yourself in there with her". 

Javier witnessed the men strangle the woman and their performing necrophilia on the corpse before finally, dragging the cadaver down the steps. The entertainment was over.

Javier told me how he smiled, and smiled, to save his life: to allay any suspicions amongst those powerful onwatchers stood all about the cubicle, watching the sex and violence within. Watching the watchers without. He was shaken by the experience and this case of the three Spanish teenage girls had brought it back to the fore.

"The general public are ignorant of the horror ...and such horrors are often enacted," the CIA agent afterwards told Javier.
"So they are," Javier told me. "It goes on ...and on".