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Mrs. Ragen testified that Thorne was afraid to eat with his mother's lawyer because "something would be put in his soup . . . He said he knew he wouldn't get [his inheritance] because his mother had spent it." Mrs. Marion McDougal Thorne, with mink stole, mourning garb, reddened toenails, and with rosary beads clutched in her hand, replied pointedly: "The boy went in and made a will, and nine days later he's dead—how do you explain that?" Her lawyers had dug up evidence that her son was a drug addict (and thus perhaps incompetent to change his will); the Ragen lawyers dug up evidence that he was a clean-cut, clean-living lad (legally competent). Bumbled Coroner McCarron: "There's some confusion here."
All of McCarron's hubbub made a sensational show, but very little sense. The coroner's physician, Dr. Harry Leon, made the worst mistake: after an autopsy, he reported that Thorne was killed by a mixture of alcohol, morphine and barbiturates. "He died by undue means," said Dr. Leon, clearly implying murder. But four pathologists rejected his report outright; his autopsy proved to be so sketchy that last week, while Coroner McCarron posed alongside with bowed head, Thome's casket was dug up for a new autopsy.
Even then, doctors doubted that the cause of death could be established. There was little chance that the tragedy of Monty Thorne, in life and in death, would ever be fully explained.
* Who was mowed down by gangster bullets in 1946, died in a hospital 51 days later after a mysteriously administered dose of mercury.