CORONER To the Stars

A NEW BOOK UNCOVERS THE TRUTH ABOUT SOME OF HOLLYWOOD'S MOST INFAMOUS DEATHS

- Lisa Chambers

There's a saying that “dead men tell no tales.” But Thomas Noguchi, once hailed as Los Angeles’ “coroner to the stars,” knows that’s not true. “In my memory...there is a montage of tragic scenes,” he wrote in his 1983 memoir. “The body of the beautiful Marilyn Monroe, her hand outstretched in death toward the telephone by her bed. Robert F. Kennedy, so vibrant and active in life, felled by an assassin’s bullet....” As Los Angeles’ chief medical examiner from 1967 to 1982, Noguchi relied on the bodies of Hollywood’s rich and famous to reveal the truth — and not everyone welcomed it.