So! Remember the Marilyn Monroe article we published on Tuesday, which poked some holes in Keya Morgan's (pictured, left) claims that he brokered the sale of an alleged sex tape to a wealthy (and still anonymous) businessman in New York for $1.5 million? Well, it turns out that Keya Morgan's attorneys were none too pleased about our piece. What follows is a back-and-forth between Keya Morgan's lawyer and Defamer's incomparable house counsel, Gaby Darbyshire. While we're not very interested in getting involved in squabbles between Keya Morgan and Mark Bellinghaus (apparently, there is some seriously bad blood between these two Marilyn Monroe fans), we do stand by the story that we printed on Tuesday night. For those that are interested in reading the chain of emails, they are printed in full after the jump. More »

Yesterday, news broke that an ancient sex tape allegedly showing Marilyn Monroe giving a blowjoy to an unidentified male had not only surfaced, but had also been sold to an anonymous New York collector for $1.5 million. The NY Post's Hasani Gittens broke the story after interviewing Keya Morgan, a memorabilia collector who claims to have brokered the sale of the 15 minute reel. However, what the Post failed to mention in their story is that Morgan is well-known within the tight-knit circle of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia collectors for being a sycophantic, press hungry namedropper (check out his likely self-penned IMDB bio) whose main objective is to promote himself and the Monroe documentary that he is working on. Not only has he been known to casually claim that he has dated both Mariah Carey and Renee Zellweger, he has thus far refused to disclose either the names of either the seller or buyer of the tape; additionally, he has not been able to provide evidence that this alleged sale even occurred.

To that end, Defamer worked with a trio of Marilyn Monroe experts in an effort to get to the bottom of Keya Morgan's outrageous claims. The team of Mark Bellinghaus (one of the foremost Marilyn Monroe experts/collectors in the world), Ernest W. Cunningham (author of The Ultimate Marilyn) and freelance journalist Jennifer J. Dickinson to put together the following piece. It's one of the longer pieces that we have ever published at Defamer, but we think that it's well worth your time. And with that, please enjoy. — MDG

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