By June 1933, shortly after her seventh birthday, Norma Jeane’s life was settled—such as it was. Yes,
there were problems at the Bo-lender home, but it was all that she knew and she was fine there. She got
along with her foster siblings and also had one faithful friend who was always there for her and never
once brought her anything but joy: her pet dog, Tippy.
Sadly, however, a tragedy involving Tippy would be the catalyst to Norma Jeane’s departure from the
Bolender home. As the story goes—and it’s been told countless times over the years in different
variations—a neighbor of the Bolenders became annoyed by the dog’s constant barking. In Marilyn’s
memoir, she writes that the neighbor, finally fed up and in a moment of fury, attacked the dog with a
hoe, savagely cutting Tippy in half.
A Bolender family member explained that what really happened was that Tippy was hit by a car and
killed. Ida, having witnessed the event, didn’t want the dead animal continually run over in the street.
Therefore, using a garden hoe, she lifted the carcass and dropped it on the driveway. She wanted
nothing more to do with it, and decided that the gruesome task of disposing of the pet should wait for
Wayne’s return. However, before Wayne got home, Norma Jeane showed up after playing with some
friends down the street. Obviously, she was devastated by the sight of her best friend’s dead body,
mangled and lying in the driveway with a nearby garden tool seemingly part of the macabre scene. She
let out a shriek, burst into tears, and ran into the house. For the next few hours, it was impossible for
Ida to calm her down.
Ida, in an attempt to make the pain of the dog’s death seem more bearable to Norma Jeane, explained
that some unknown party had shot Tippy in the head and that his death was immediate. She thought
that if the girl believed that not much suffering had been involved, she would feel better. However,
Norma Jeane refused to believe Ida and had invented her own story. “Tippy was cut up with a hoe,”
Norma Jeane insisted through her tears. “The neighbors finally killed him!”
Ida tried everything she could think of to shake that scenario from Norma Jeane’s mind, even telling
her the truth at one point. It didn’t work. The girl was absolutely convinced that the neighbors had been
plotting her dog’s death for some time and had finally succeeded at it. Ida found this very disturbing—
maybe even paranoid. “Ida wondered if Norma Jeane was starting to have delusions like her mother,
Gladys,” explains a relative, “because she wouldn’t let go of this crazy idea that the neighbors had
hacked up her dog. On some level, I think Ida had always been afraid of Gladys… and now she was
wondering about her daughter. She had become very uneasy about it.”
Norma Jeane’s paroxysm lasted into the next day, with the family enjoying silence only during her
slumber. Ida had a real problem with this kind of expression of emotion. Actually, she’d recently begun
to wonder if she had even been put on this earth to raise such a sensitive child. This certainly hadn’t
been the first time Norma Jeane became upset when something in her little world went awry. Ida started
to wonder if perhaps her influence was backfiring. While her goal had always been to strengthen
Norma Jeane, maybe her firm hand and distant affection was actually having a negative effect on the
girl. Had it created a child who would spin out of control when faced with any emotional trauma?
It seems clear now that Ida was confused and felt she was at a crossroads with her foster daughter. She
had once believed she and Wayne would adopt the girl. However, Gladys had again made it clear that
this would not be the case. In fact, in recent months, Gladys had started saying that she wanted Norma
Jeane back. Stalling, Ida always had an excuse as to why the girl could not be returned—she was in
school, she had made friends, she was not feeling well. Finally, Ida decided that perhaps the time had
come. Norma Jeane was already distraught, Ida told Wayne, so why not let her traumatizing memory of
her dog’s death blend with the difficulty she would suffer during a transfer of custody? The next
afternoon, she telephoned Gladys. “I think it would be best now if you came and took Norma Jeane,”
she told her. “She’s very upset. I think she needs her mother.”