by Lisa Pease
Inside the pantry, Beringer saw a man in a tuxedo “trying to take a bullet out of the wall with … a silver knife,” ostensibly “for a souvenir.”78
After someone pulled the 4"×¾" pine wood door jamb casing off the front of the swinging doorframe, photographs were eventually taken by the FBI of two holes in the center divider and two other holes in the southern door jamb. The photographs showed that the holes were circled and labeled by Tew.79 According to Barber, Tew may have marked the holes, rather than leaving them for the LAPD, on the assumption that the Sheriff’s office would conduct the primary investigation. “[T]here were so few blue suits [LAPD officers] there that we were really the only police in that area” for a period of about 10 to 15 minutes.80
As the men finished clearing the pantry, LAPD Sergeant Jones recalled seeing what he “thought might have been a bullet hole in a door jamb.”81
At the Rampart Station, Calkins and McGann interviewed Dick Aubry, who worked part-time for the Negro Press Bureau. Aubry had been walking in front of Kennedy through the pantry. Aubry saw a short Caucasian male in a dark sports coat, about 25–26 years old, kneeling on the table, getting down as he passed him. Aubry had just reached the end of the first steam table when he heard something. He heard one shot, then five more in a spurt. “I thought it was Chinese firecrackers … it was just a constant … pow, pow, just cracking like a little bag of potato chips or something.” He saw a flash, “like a little spark.”
“Did you see this guy with the flashes coming out of his hand?”
“Oh yes,” Aubry replied. He described how the gunman was six or seven feet in front of Kennedy at the time. “It was just the flashes I saw. I thought I saw somebody throw a firecracker right at him.”
“Did you get … any indication at all that there was anybody helping this assailant who shot the Senator?”
“Booker Griffin asked me, should we take off after the other cat like this, and my first impulse was to say, ‘yes,’ but …”
“But by then it was all over?”
“Yes. But Booker said, ‘Did they get the other guy?’”
Calkins and McGann took down the little information Aubry had on Booker Griffin, the publicity director for the Negro Industrial Economic Union. Despite this provocative information indicating a possible accomplice, the LAPD would not interview Griffin until late July, and then only after Griffin had provided his own account in a local newspaper.
The FBI, however, didn’t wait that long. Griffin told the FBI a few days later of a 6'2" Caucasian male he had seen a few times that night in the company of the suspect and currently in custody.82 Other witnesses would provide similar accounts, which sounded remarkably like the suspect Sharaga had been seeking in his earliest broadcasts.
Over police radio, an officer asked if another suspect was still being sought. Control responded by rebroadcasting Sharaga’s description of the 6'2" Caucasian male suspect. Sharaga added “Code 2 on that,” indicating that the information should be given urgent attention.
Two minutes later, Inspector Powers got on the radio and asked Sharaga, “Where did you get your information on this second suspect wanted on the broadcast?”
“The second suspect came from a witness who was pushed over by this suspect,” Sharaga replied. “Witness and his wife—we have name and address. The Juv[enile] officers who were collecting witnesses initially have a sheet of paper with the name and address of this witness.”83
“What proximity to the shooting were these people?” Powers asked.
“They were adjacent to the room.”
“Disregard that broadcast,” Powers said. “We got Rafer Johnson and Jesse Unruh who were right next to him and they only have one man and don’t want them to get anything started on a big conspiracy. This could be somebody that was getting out of the way so they wouldn’t get shot. But the people that were right next to Kennedy say there was just one man.”
Either Powers had been misinformed or he was deliberately misrepresenting, as neither man had said that, and Rafer had twice noted that, due to his focus on the man with the gun, he didn’t look around to see whether others were involved. But Sharaga had no way of knowing that and dutifully followed Powers’ orders.
“2L30 to Control, disregard my broadcast. A description male/Caucasian 20 to 22, 6' to 6'2"—this is apparently not a correct description. Disregard and cancel.”84
Ironically, at nearly the same time that Sharaga’s description was cancelled, two Juvenile officers, perhaps the ones to which Sharaga had just given the name and address of two witnesses shortly before, broadcast a description of a “male Latin” and a “female Caucasian” wanted “as suspects.”85 Despite Powers’ best efforts, the door to conspiracy was about to be pushed wide open.
Deputy District Attorney John Ambrose was approached by Sandra Serrano as he stood outside the hotel’s main entrance. She told him how a young man in a gold sweater and a girl in a polka dot dress had come by her saying “We shot him.” He took her contact info and walked her down to the Gold Room.86
Before Serrano appeared on the television, Vince DiPierro, who had overheard Serrano describe a woman in a polka dot dress, volunteered to Ambrose that he, too, had seen a girl in a polka dot dress in the pantry just as the shooting was starting.87 Serrano and DiPierro had a brief exchange of not more than a few seconds before an officer interceded and said they should not talk to each other.88 Nearly immediately, according to Ambrose, NBC’s Sander Vanocur pulled Serrano aside and put her on camera.89
Ambrose asked one of the officers if that was a good idea, letting a witness talk to the press before the police had heard her story.
“I guess there’s nothing we can do about that now,” the officer told Ambrose.90
On live TV at about 1:30 A.M. Pacific Time,91 Vanocur asked Serrano to recount what she had seen and heard. The distraught Serrano told the pre-dawn national audience:
Serrano: Well, he, he—everybody was in the main room, you know, listening to him speak and it was too hot, so I went outside, and I was out on the terrace, and I was out for about five, ten minutes, you know, I started to get cold. And then, you know, and everybody was cheering and everything, and then I was standing there just thinking, you know, thinking about how many people there were and how wonderful it was. Then this girl came running down the stairs in the back, came running down the stairs and said, “We’ve shot him, we’ve shot him.” Who did you shoot? And she said, “We’ve shot Senator Kennedy.” And aft—she had—I can remember what she had on and everything—and after that a boy came down with her. He was about twenty-three years old and he was Mexican-American because—I can remember that because I’m Mexican-American—and I says, “What’s happening?” And all of a sudden all these people start coming down that back end, and I walked in, and I was by the bar area and nobody seemed to know anything about it, and I thought well, you know, maybe I misunderstood or something.
Vanocur: Wait a minute. Did this young lady say “we”?
Serrano: “We,” she said.
Vanocur: Meaning, “We, the Mexican-Americans”?
Serrano: No. She was not of Mexican-American descent. She was not. She was Caucasian. She had on a white dress with polka dots. She was light-skinned, dark hair. She had black shoes and she had a funny nose. It was, it was—I thought it was really funny. All my friends tell me I’m so observant.92
When she finished, the police wanted to question Serrano at Rampart Station. Serrano asked Ambrose to come with her. She also asked him to call her aunt and uncle to tell them she was all right. Ambrose made the call and then drove to Rampart to join Serrano, but when he arrived, the police told him he was not needed.93
Back at Parker Center, in Room 318, the suspect faced John Howard of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, Jordan, Sergeant A.B. Melendres (another detective from Rampart), and George Murphy from the D.A.’s office. Like the others before him, Howard informed the suspect of his rights. “Do you understand y
our rights, first of all?”
“Yes. I think that I shall remain incognito,” the suspect replied.
Howard gave the suspect his number and asked him to call any time, day or night, if he wanted to reach him. Howard explained what was ahead for the suspect.
“You will be booked. That’s a legal procedure. Fingerprints, pictures taken, everything like that. After that time, I’m sure you will be able to clean up.”
Oddly, the suspect seemed not to care about any of that. He wanted to talk about something else. “How long have you been with the D.A.’s office, Mr. Murphy?” the suspect asked. “Remember Kirschke?”
A year earlier, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Jack Kirschke had been found guilty of two counts of murder for killing his wife and her lover, a charge Kirschke had vigorously denied.
Howard wondered why the suspect was so interested in the Kirschke case. He told the suspect they’d take up the subject again and ended the conversation.
At the Ambassador Hotel, the LAPD criminalist who had presented key evidence at Kirschke’s trial, Officer DeWayne Wolfer, reported to Sergeant James MacArthur in the pantry. Wolfer had called in LAPD photographer Charles Collier and Sergeant William Lee to help him. Collier was assigned to photograph, among other items, “bullet holes.”94 For the next few hours, Wolfer and his team, on behalf of the LAPD’s Special Investigation Division (SID), scoured the scene of the crime, collecting what evidence they could and photographing anything of significance.
Outside the Ambassador Hotel, Deputy H. J. Foster, who had been patrolling the patio area east of the Palm Court, saw a man step out of the bushes. Foster asked him what he was doing there. The 24-year-old Terry Lee Fraser became nervous and evasive and denied walking in the bushes. Foster apprehended Fraser and took him to the Sheriff’s command post at the IBM building for questioning, where he released him to Sergeant D.G. Fossey’s custody, who contacted Sharaga by radio.95 Sergeant Davis of the Sheriff’s office wanted an LAPD unit to meet him at the IBM unit to interview this suspect. Sharaga responded that there’d be about a five-minute delay getting officers to the building.
Sharaga then tried to notify Lieutenant Sillings that a Sheriff’s unit at the IBM building had “some people to be interviewed” and asked if they should be brought back to the Command Post. But immediately after Sharaga mentioned sending officers to the IBM building, Sharaga’s Command Post communications went out for the next 21 minutes.96 Someone had left a microphone on that interfered with the Command Post’s channel.
Officer A.D. Bollinger and LASO deputies Wernicke and Foster brought Fraser to the Command Post. After Sharaga’s communications were restored, Sharaga asked Shillings over the radio, “What they believe is a suspect—do you want him in there or do you want him taken to Rampart?”
“Take him to Rampart,” Sillings responded. Fraser, the third known suspect apprehended that night, was taken to the Rampart Station, where he was fingerprinted, photographed, interviewed, and held until 6 A.M.97
Back at Rampart Station, McGann and Calkins interviewed Thane Cesar, the security guard who had been at Kennedy’s right elbow when the shooting started. Cesar told them he worked days at Lockheed but also did assignments for Ace Security. He gave them his manager Tom Spangler’s home number, as Spangler was the one who had asked him to come to the Ambassador Hotel that night. Today, people’s home number and work number are often the same, a cell phone number. But in the 1960s, people had different landline numbers for their workplace and home. It was odd then that Cesar had Spangler’s home number at the ready, but not his office number.
Cesar described that when Kennedy had entered the pantry after his speech, Cesar had grabbed Kennedy’s right elbow with his left hand and stayed with him. As they had reached the first steam table, Kennedy turned to his left. “When he did, my hand broke loose—sort of broke loose from his arm, and, of course, I grabbed it again because people were still all over the place. … I just happened to look up and that’s when I seen—all I could see was an arm and a gun. … And I reached for mine, but it was too late. He had done fired and when he did, I ducked because I was as close as Kennedy was, and from what I can remember, from what I did, I grabbed for the Senator98 and fell back and when I hit—there’s iceboxes right here…and I fell against that and then the Senator fell right down in front of me.”99
According to Cesar, the gunman was “standing behind the camera crews and all I could see was his hand and the gun.” Cesar didn’t think it sounded like a .38 and guessed the gun was a .22. Cesar didn’t recognize the gun, saying he’d seen only the end of the barrel. He suspected the gunman was short because he hadn’t seen his face—only an arm sticking out from the crowd.
At 2:15 A.M., the primary suspect was booked at the Central Jail, charged with 217 PC—Assault with Intent to Commit Murder.100 In the nearby police headquarters, Jordan, Howard and Murphy sat down with Jesse Unruh. “I must have been 20 to 30 feet behind him,” Unruh said, as he entered the pantry. “I heard this crackle of what I thought was [sic] really firecrackers, and I don’t really quite remember how many reports there were. I’d guess—it sounded to me like somewhere between five and ten—but there was such a sharp crackle that I couldn’t distinguish the individual reports.” He hadn’t seen the actual shooting.
At Rampart Station, Calkins and McGann continued to interview witnesses. Estelyn Duffy had been with her friend Joseph LaHive (whom NBC interviewed earlier) in the hallway between the stage and the swinging doors through which Kennedy entered the pantry. Kennedy entered the pantry just ahead of them, after which Duffy heard what she later learned were shots. “They weren’t real loud, sounded like a whip going.” She told them, “I thought I heard at least ten shots…. It wasn’t one or two. It was a lot of shots.”
The suspect’s gun could only hold eight bullets.
At the sound of the shots, LaHive had rushed into the room and joined the struggle to get the gun from the suspect. He told Calkins and McGann, “in my own rash conclusion at the time…this many shots couldn’t have come from this little revolver.”
The police were particularly interested in obtaining any photos from the event. Did the police want the photos so they could do a thorough investigation? Or did the police want to control all photographs lest something suggesting a conspiracy leak out?
High school student Scott Enyart had been standing on a table in the pantry, waiting for Kennedy so he could take his picture, when the shooting began. He took pictures “while the shots were being fired” or “maybe a little afterward,” he wasn’t sure. He jumped up on one of the steam tables so he had a good view of the room. Enyart mentioned his friend Brent Gold was there with him, taking pictures as well. Enyart wanted to know if he’d get his pictures back, stressing they were very important to him. He was told he might get back prints or negatives, but the police weren’t sure which. McGann gave him his card and told Enyart to call back “maybe Thursday or Friday” and they’d let him know the status of his pictures. Forty years later, Enyart would win a lawsuit against the LAPD over this film, but as the film was ostensibly being returned to him, it was stolen from the courier’s car.
Hotel maître d’ Eddie Minasian told Calkins and McGann he had been standing to the right of Kennedy and slightly in front of him as the shooting began. Kennedy had just finished shaking someone’s hand when a man came up and reached around his left. He fired two or three shots before Minasian and Karl Uecker grabbed him. Uecker had been ahead and to the right of Kennedy by about four to five feet, according to Minasian. He had been leading him through the pantry but Kennedy broke away to shake hands. Minasian said Kennedy “took a step back to shake hands with personnel”101 when Minasian saw someone reach around past Uecker with a gun. He “saw two shots fired” and then Uecker grabbed him. Minasian jumped forward to help but turned to look back. He saw Paul Schrade fall, then Kennedy. He helped Uecker subdue the suspect.
Calkins asked which hand the gun was in, and Minasian
said the man’s right hand. The man was standing to the front left of Kennedy when he fired. “It sounded like firecrackers going off.”
Calkins showed Minasian the gun and asked if that was the one he remembered. It looked similar, Minasian said. Minasian said Rafer Johnson kept asking “Why did you do it?” and the shooter kept answering, “Let me explain.”
Minasian pointed Uecker out to Calkins and McGann, as Uecker was sitting just outside the room where they were talking.
When Calkins and McGann interviewed Uecker later, Uecker confirmed the shooter was “right in front of me” and that both of them were in front of Kennedy. “I think he must have covered the gun with something, paper or something, ’cause the first [sic] I didn’t see no gun; then I saw something white, either paper or something, and I heard a shot…. I didn’t even realize at the first shot that it was a gun but by the second shot, I turned around and saw Kennedy falling down out of my hand and then at the time that I realized it must have been a gun, then I grabbed him….”102
McGann asked, “Did he sort of reach around you to shoot the Senator?”—information he had just heard from Minasian.
“Yes, I think he was right in front of me because the way he—he was right in front of me, right in front. He turned around and shot with his right hand.”
McGann showed him the gun and asked if the gun “appears to be similar to the one you saw?”
“I tell you the truth, I don’t think it was that big, but could be. I really don’t—”
“You’re not sure?”
“No, I’m not sure because I didn’t pay too much attention to the gun.”
Both Minasian and Uecker described the man’s suit as a “work suit,” that was “dark” and “blue.” “I thought it was one of our banquet workers because he had a blue suit on, a dark suit on,” Uecker explained. “I thought it was one of the busboys, one of the housemen.”
