'Godfather' actor claims Robert F Kennedy may have plotted Marilyn Monroe's murder to stop her from going public about JFK

Godfather actor Gianni Russo has claimed that Marilyn Monroe was killed and the whole thing might have been orchestrated by Robert F Kennedy who did not want Monroe to go public about her involvement with him and John F Kennedy.

Speaking to the New York Post, Russo, who claims to have had an affair with the late Hollywood icon, also alleged that Monroe didn't die of barbiturate overdose as stated officially. 

 

Russo, who played the role of Carlo Rizzi in Godfather, told the Post, "It had to be Bobby. No one else would kill her. The mob would not have done it. They liked her. She was that party girl. Give her a couple pills, a couple drinks and she’ll f**k everyone."

He recalled that he was 16, to Monroe's 33, when the two started on an on and off relationship for four years. He also said that mob boss Frank Costello had asked him to keep an eye on the star after settling an issue she had with producer Darryl Zanuck on the West Coast. 

 

Russo said, "It was taken three days before she was found dead in Los Angeles of what coroners deemed to be a drug overdose."

This was, however, not the case, Russo claimed. According to him, key members of the mob convened to plan a trap for Robert F Kennedy, who was the attorney general at that time, and JFK, who was the president. They wanted to film a threesome with Monroe and use the recording to blackmail JFK into invading Cuba and handover the casinos to the organized crime syndicates, Russo said.

This did not work because JFK did not show up. Monroe, however, learnt of the plot and warned that she will go to the media about her relationship with JFK and that's how she wrote her own death sentence, according to Russo. 

Getting into the specifics, he said, "A guy known as The Doctor — a killer for hire and an actual MD; he had done major hits for the mob — injected air into the vein near Marilyn’s pubic region. She died of an embolism, but it looked like drugs to the coroner." 

 

He, however, denied the mob's part in Monroe's death and said that it had to be Robert. He also commented about Monroe as a lover and said, "Marilyn [Monroe] was the best lover. She just wanted to please you."

 

Russo's memoir titled 'Hollywood Godfather - My life in the movies and the Mob' chronicles the actor's involvement with the mob world in detail and also speaks of how he got his chance to work on Francis Ford Coppola's classic. It comes out on March 12.

In the interview, the actor also recalled how he initially got on actor Marlin Brando's face but grew closer to him later. Close enough that Brando called him first when his son Christian shot his daughter Cheyenne's boyfriend.