Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962. Thirty years later, Hugh Hefner bought the crypt next to hers in Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery, in Los Angeles, for 75.000 dollars.
It was not a gesture of admiration. Hefner had built his empire with nude photos that Marilyn took in 1949, when she desperately needed money. She was paid 50 dollars for those images; he later bought them for 500 and turned them into Playboy’s first cover, in 1953, without her seeing another cent or giving her consent for that use. Decades later he would say that spending eternity beside her was “too sweet not to do it”.
But Hefner was not even the first to become obsessed with the exact location of her final resting place. Richard Poncher bought the tomb directly above hers from Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn’s ex-husband. His wife fulfilled his last wish: he was buried face down, so he could look at her for all eternity. In 2009, that same tomb was sold at auction for 4,6 million dollars. Not even death freed her from the men who pursued her all her life.