One of the lingering mysteries of Marilyn Monroe—a subject of speculation, gossip, and even conspiracy theories—is the nature of her relationship with John F. Kennedy. The actress, who would have turned a hundred tomorrow, sang a scandalous rendition of “Happy Birthday” to the President in May, 1962, three months before her death, sparking endless questions about their connection behind the scenes. Documents that could provide answers would be tremendously valuable.

In the early nineties, a man named Lex Cusack claimed to have found some. Cusack was the son of a distinguished lawyer named Larry Cusack, who had worked for four years on Monroe’s estate, concluding his involvement a month after the death of the actress’s mother, Gladys, in 1984. The elder Cusack died the following year, leaving behind a trove of files that Lex Cusack began to explore another half decade later. The documents seemed to contain bombshells: the President appeared to have consulted with Larry Cusack about a possible divorce, and about how to navigate secret ties to the Mob. Kennedy had also, it seemed, set up a trust for Monroe’s mother, co-signed by the actress and his brother Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General.

The revelations were incendiary, but they weren’t implausible. In addition to Larry Cusack’s efforts for the Monroe estate, he had worked on “sensitive matters” for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. “It is not hard to imagine that Larry Cusack might have had a relationship with the Kennedy family, or that in the course of that relationship [he] would have performed a number of extraordinary services for the first Catholic President,” The New Yorker’s David Samuels wrote, in 1997. Indeed, Seymour Hersh, another New Yorker contributor and a Pulitzer Prize winner famed for his investigations, was soon in close contact with Lex, drawing on the materials for a book about the assassinated leader. But were the documents real? As historians, collectors, and TV networks examined them, questions about their authenticity proliferated—and, if they were forgeries, about the identity of the person behind them.