Marilyn Monroe was found dead at 36

Early on 5 August 1962, the actress Marilyn Monroe was found dead in the bedroom of her Brentwood home in Los Angeles. She was 36. Beside her bed sat a small pharmacy of sedatives and sleeping pills; the vial of the barbiturate Nembutal was empty.

The Los Angeles County coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, recorded the cause of death on her certificate as “acute barbiturate poisoning” from an “ingestion of overdose,” and the intentionality as a “probable suicide.” A fatal level of sedatives was found in her system.

Monroe had become one of the most famous people on earth, a comic actress and sex symbol whose films grossed enormous sums. Yet she had long struggled with insomnia, anxiety, and dependence on prescription drugs. Her sudden death at the height of her fame turned grief into legend, and decades of conspiracy theories have never displaced the coroner’s quiet, clinical verdict.