Ex-Prosecutor Says Monroe Dumped Robert Kennedy

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Before she died, Marilyn Monroe wasn't heartbroken over being dumped by a Kennedy; she was the one doing the dumping.

So asserts John W. Miner, the former prosecutor who investigated the screen siren's death for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. He made his assertion during a telephone interview after filing a libel suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against a supermarket tabloid.

Miner claims in his suit that the National Examiner misquoted him last year on the circumstances of Monroe's demise. Secrets held for 35 years about her death could emerge as Miner tries to set the record straight, his attorney Paul S. Sigelman said.

Chief among them are the contents of two tapes Monroe allegedly made at home just days before her death. Miner said that only he and the troubled star's psychiatrist heard those tapes before they were destroyed.

Among the nuggets Miner said they reveal: Monroe's death could not have been a suicide, despite the coroner's official finding that it was.

On the tapes, Miner said, Monroe talked about her plans for the future--and, yes, about President John F. Kennedy and his younger brother. "She mentions them all right," Miner said in the interview. "According to what she says on the tape, it was Monroe who bounced Robert Kennedy."

Miner, now in his late 70s, said police botched the investigation of Monroe's death from an overdose of barbiturates in August 1962. He attended the autopsy, he said, and later listened to the secret tape recordings that he said were eventually destroyed by the actress' psychiatrist, who died 30 years ago.

Court papers say Miner had promised the psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, that he would never disclose the contents of the tapes. But Miner said he recently received permission from Greenson's widow to bare the secret after published reports speculated--falsely, Miner contends--that Greenson and the Kennedys had been involved in Monroe's death.

Miner is seeking unspecified damages from Globe Communications, which publishes the National Examiner.

Michael B. Kahane, Globe's vice president and general counsel, said the suit was not filed in time to meet the one-year statute of limitations. And, he said, although the wording in one paragraph of the article may have been unclear, any mistaken impressions were removed by a clarification in the next week's edition.