Guest Author - Vance Rowe

You Be the Judge.

She wasn’t as legendary as Marilyn Monroe, but Judith Exner’s “alleged” affairs are stuff of fairy tales and spy novels. It has long been said that Marilyn Monroe carried on an affair with John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Robert loved her but she loved John. The weekend before her death in Brentwood, Marilyn was in Lake Tahoe where she reportedly met with Sam Giancana who wanted to be sure that she wasn’t going to do a tell all after allegedly being shunned by both Kennedy Brothers.

Joe DiMaggio said that she was lured there by Frank Sinatra and the Kennedys where blackmail photos were said to have been taken of her to make sure she stayed silent. Her career was beginning to take off again so a scandal would not be good for her right now. A week later she was found dead in her home as a supposed result of suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Of course, the suicide, being a controversy in of itself for many conspiracy theories.

Like Monroe, Judith Exner claims to have had an affair with John Kennedy and like Monroe; she also has ties with Sam “Momo” Giancana. The one real difference between Marilyn Monroe and Judith Exner is that Judith Exner’s affair with John Kennedy was first and happened when he was just a senator. The two of them, Kennedy and Exner, had a mutual friend in Frank Sinatra and it was through the singer that they met one night in Vegas. Later she would also carry on affair with Giancana at the same time as John Kennedy and allegedly carried messages back and forth between the “two rich and powerful men”. Some of those messages were having said to have been about an assassination plot against the Communist leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro.

However, aides of and Kennedy family members have all said that Judith Exner, then known as Judith Campbell, did not have an affair with Kennedy but in 1999, Exner told Larry King on his cable news station talk show that Kennedy asked her to set up a meeting between him and Sam Giancana, then known only as “Sam Flood”, be cause Kennedy allegedly felt that Sam Flood might be able to help him with his campaign in his bid for the presidency. She said that John Kennedy gave her a briefcase, of sorts, full of money to give to Flood. She also said that years later, she had found out that the money went to West Virginia where Kennedy eventually won a huge comeback victory over Hubert Humphrey.

Someone believed Exner’s story, because in 1974, she was called before the Church Committee, a senate investigation on assassinations, and questioned about her alleged involvement with President Kennedy, Frank Sinatra and Sam Giancana. While the Church Committee did not leak her name to the press, it was said to have been leaked by the Republicans and Kennedy’s squeaky clean image started to become tarnished. What would Judith Exner have to gain by making this all up? She never once tried to capitalize on the alleged affairs and only wrote a book about it after her name became known to the public from the Church Committee hearings.

What do you think? Do you believe she had an affair with John Kennedy and Chicago mob boss, Sam Giancana? Read more about her through the links I have provided at the bottom of the page. Be sure to come in to the Crime forum and place your vote in the poll I have created there.