Not letting me create a world in woodfel
All of these factions, according to Otash, were expressing great interest in what the wiretaps in Lawford's home would reveal.Īs Otash and other Hollywood cognoscenti knew, both Jack and Bobby Kennedy had been sexually involved with Marilyn Monroe, the world's reigning movie sex goddess, and their trysts-sometimes at Lawford's Santa Monica beach house-were also of interest to Otash's clients. In 1962, Peter Lawford was the brother-in-law of the president and the attorney general of the United States, two men with enemies ranging from their political adversaries to the corrupt Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa to Mob members whom Robert Kennedy had targeted for investigation. This time it was for a variety of parties who wanted to develop a "derogatory profile" of Jack Kennedy in anticipation of his nomination for president in 1960. Before long he had helped bug the Lawford house again, but not for Peter. Otash knew the Lawfords were having marital problems, and he assumed that Peter suspected Pat was cheating on him.įred Otash was a man for hire, one with few personal loyalties. In 1959, Lawford had called on the investigator again, this time to borrow electronic-eavesdropping equipment so that he could bug his own telephone. Otash had helped Lawford out of that scrape and gotten the story killed. "Fred," he told Otash, "now that I'm married to Pat Kennedy, I really can't afford this horseshit." Confidential, he had learned, knew about his frequent forays to brothels, and he was worried. This had put Lawford in a vulnerable position. Kennedy, the former American ambassador to Great Britain, and sister of Massachusetts senator John F. In 1954, Peter Lawford had married Patricia Kennedy, the daughter of Joseph P.
One of his regular clients was Confidential magazine, a sensationalists monthly that often got the goods on celebrities. Otash had later left the police department and gone into private practice as an investigator, working for the likes of Sheilah Graham, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe. "Every time we busted a bunch of hookers, his name was always in their trick books." "I told him to cool it," Otash later recalled. That meeting had been to give Peter a warning. As a vice cop in the Los Angeles Police Department, Otash had first met Lawford in the late 1940s, when the handsome actor was one of MGM's biggest stars. Peter Lawford and Otash had had a long, if sporadic, relationship. "Fred," the voice on the line said, "this is Peter Lawford. A man used to late-night summonings, Otash snapped alert and picked up the receiver. On a quiet, palm-tree-lined street in West Hollywood, private investigator Fred Otash, sleeping fitfully in the heat, awakened to the insistent jangle of his telephone. Saturday, August 4, 1962, had been so hot in Los Angeles that by one in the morning the temperature still hovered in the upper seventies.