by Lisa Pease
59 These and all further quotes from the suspect and his interviewers are excerpted from the LAPD and FBI transcripts of the taped interviews conducted in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, as well as the tapes themselves. There are some minor variations between the FBI and LAPD transcripts. Tapes of these sessions are also available from the California State Archives.
60 LAPD Intelligence Division Log of June 5, 1968.
61 LAPD call signs represent the division, the unit, and the officer type. “2 Henry,” the code for the person who made this report, means someone from the Rampart division (2) who works in administrative services (Henry). Sergeant Sharaga’s call number, 2L30, meant he was also from Rampart, was a lone officer (L) and was likely a field supervisor (numbers ending in 0 indicate a field supervisor, except for 10, which indicates the watch supervisor). “Adam” represents a two-man patrol car. “Boy” represents a two-man van. Call-sign information from www.freqofnature.com/frequencies/ca/losangeles/lapd.htm, which no longer exists as of April 2017, which credits former LAPD dispatcher Harry Marnell with providing much of the information.
62 LAPD radio transcripts and Philip Van Praag’s transcription of additional LAPD radio traffic. Van Praag constructed equipment that allowed him to copy the LAPD’s original 20-track tape recording at the California State Archives and separate out the 20 tracks. His transcription of the first 20 minutes after the shooting appears in an appendix in the book he and Robert Joling, J.D., wrote and self-published in 2008, called An Open and Shut Case.
63 Houghton, p. 32. Note that Houghton didn’t mention the possibility of a domestic conspiracy.
64 Houghton, p. 14.
65 LAPD interview of Rafer Johnson, 6/5/68. Although the transcript indicates this conversation took place at Parker Center, other records make it clear that this conversation transpired at the Rampart Station, where Calkins and McGann interviewed witnesses all night.
66 The LAPD transcriber noted unintelligible overtalk at this point.
67 LAPD interview of Rafer Johnson, 6/5/68. Neither Calkins nor McGann identified the model of the gun booked into evidence. The gun in evidence is a 55-SA.
68 LAPD interview of Rafer Johnson, 6/5/68.
69 LAPD interview of Rafer Johnson, 6/5/68.
70 Both the Scheer and Chambers quotes are taken from KTLA footage I reviewed at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. A man was interviewed on camera who said he saw two flashes that he thought were flashbulbs, so it is unclear where the “four” number came from unless the comment was made off camera or by some other witness.
71 NBC footage.
72 FBI memo from Cartha DeLoach to William Nolan, 6/5/68.
73 Some authors have tried to claim these were shallow angles. But photos of Dwayne Wolfer standing in Kennedy’s position while Coroner Thomas Noguchi tries to hold up rods matching the entry holes of the coat with the spots where Kennedy was hit make a mockery of that claim. These photos can be seen in the Turner and Christian book.
74 LAPD interview of Mrs. L. Omer, R.N. 6/5/68.
75 Kennedy medical report by M. Bowles, p. 10.
76 The SUS Final Report (p. 207) spells his last name Lindblom. Dan Moldea lists his last name as both Lindblom (p. 66) and Lindbloom (p. 59 et al).
77 SUS Final Report, p. 207.
78 Moldea, p. 235.
79 Moldea, p. 234.
80 Moldea, p. 234.
81 Moldea, p. 66.
82 FBI interview of Booker Griffin, dated 6/11/68.
83 For years, Sharaga has maintained that an elderly Jewish couple told him of a girl in a polka dot dress fleeing the scene saying “We shot him.” No evidence exists in the LAPD’s record of this. Phil Van Praag, a sound engineer who examined a tape of the shooting in the pantry that will be discussed later, told me that the police radio was recorded on multi-track drums which would be nearly impossible to alter without some obvious sign. Several tracks were recorded simultaneously, so a splice or edit would have affected all tracks. I believe Sharaga may have confused this event—the report of a tall sandy-haired man escaping—with one relating to the girl in a polka dot dress. Sharaga, years later, told Art Kevin in an interview that he had taken down the name of the couple and handed it over on paper to other LAPD officers. Sharaga associates Powers saying “don’t want to get them started on a big conspiracy” with the polka dot dress story, but on the police radio transmission, Powers’ statement clearly refers to Sharaga’s broadcast of a tall blond man. That said, there is still some backup for Sharaga’s belief that he talked to a man and a woman who alerted him to another man and woman, a point which will be discussed later in this book.
84 Excerpted from the radio communication log, SUS files.
85 The description of this APB is as noted in the Final Report, p. 21. The original APB has never surfaced, although numerous references to it exist.
86 SUS Final Report p. 206.
87 LAPD interview of John Ambrose, 6/10/68. Ambrose did not know the young man’s name, but from his description it is clear he is referring to Vincent DiPierro.
88 Author’s interview with Vince DiPierro in 2005. DiPierro emphasized that he and Serrano had not compared notes on the polka dot dress or any other aspects of the girl. There was no time. According to DiPierro, their brief exchange transpired in less than 30 seconds. Serrano asked DiPierro if he had seen a girl go by saying “we shot him,” and he told her had not.
89 Some records indicate this happened around 1:30 A.M. and others at 2 A.M.
90 LAPD interview of John Ambrose, 6/10/68.
91 Time is from Brad Johnson, former CNN producer, who collected live footage from the event.
92 LAPD transcript of the broadcast. I added some punctuation to the transcription to make her statement more readable. The added punctuation does not alter the meaning of the text.
93 LAPD interview of John Ambrose, 6/10/68.
94 LAPD interview of Charles Collier, 10/7/68.
95 Final Report, p. 211.
96 LAPD Radio logs.
97 Fraser’s strange story will be covered in a later chapter. It’s worth nothing that although I call Fraser the “third” suspect arrested, as we saw from the radio traffic, additional “other suspects” may also have been in custody.
98 LAPD interview of Thane Cesar, 6/5/68. The transcript here says “I grabbed for the center” but I think that was a phonetic mistake. I believe he said “Senator.”
99 LAPD interview of Thane Cesar, 6/5/68.
100 Final Report, p. 310.
101 LAPD interview of Edward Minasian, 6/5/68.
102 LAPD interview of Karl Uecker, 6/5/68.
103 LAPD transcripts of recorded interviews with Jesus Perez, 6/5/68.
104 LAPD 6/5/68 2:35 A.M. interview transcript of Sandra Serrano. At the start of the interview she said she saw the girl came running down two to three minutes “later,” but in the same interview she makes it clear the interval was 15–20 minutes. I believe she meant she saw the girl and her companion again two to three minutes after she heard noises that made Serrano assume Kennedy had just come down. More likely, the commotion she heard was stemming from the news Kennedy had been shot.
105 I have not seen a copy of this particular APB, mentioning the girl’s male companion, in the official record. It was captured for posterity, however, in Robert Houghton’s account of these events in Special Unit Senator (p. 31). Houghton’s co-author, Theodore Taylor, was given unprecedented access to LAPD records to write his account. Ironically, because of this, the LAPD in later years had no case in arguing for continued withholding of their files, since they had already been shared with civilian Taylor. I found several copies of a second APB, mentioning the girl but not the male in the gold sweater, issued not long after this one, which remained in effect for several days. I have no doubt that Taylor was quoting verbatim from the actual APB.
106 Houghton, pp. 31–32.
107 This APB can be found in the LAPD’s files.
1
08 The LAPD transcript notes this is Howard speaking. An FBI transcript says this is Jordan speaking. I believe the LAPD transcriptionist made more accurate identifications, so I am attributing quotes based on the LAPD transcripts.
109 LAPD interview of Rosey Grier, 6/5/68.
110 Joel Whitney, Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers (New York: OR Books, 2016), pp. 1-2.
111 LAPD interview of Freddy Plimpton, 6/5/68.
112 LAPD interview of Michael Wayne, 6/5/68.
113 The transcriptionist noted that “bively” was a phonetic translation. I believe he said a “bib-like” collar because that matches what he described here and that’s also what he said to the Grand Jury two days later.
114 The Emergency Control Center Journal in the LAPD records states: “Possible suspect JESSE Greer, male Cauc., en route Rampart Station (info received from Jesse Unruh).” But there’s no evidence Unruh supplied the name.
115 Although this key bothered the LAPD and the press for a while, I’ve never found this episode particularly important. I once opened someone else’s car, accidentally, thinking it was mine, using my own car key.
116 Bobby Ghosh, “Beyond Waterboarding: What Interrogators Can Still Do,” TIME, April 28, 2009 via www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1894432,00.html, accessed 7/10/12, quoting from the Army Field Manual.
117 LAPD interview of Dr. William B. Neal, 8/2/68.
118 “Circumstances” is not in the official transcript, but when this tape was played at the trial, both the defense and prosecution agreed that was the next word. Trial transcript, p. 6162.
119 LAPD interview of Inspector J.W. Powers, 10/2/68.
120 Robert Wiedrich, “‘Felt Him Fire Gun,’ Hotel Worker Says,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1968.
121 Robert Wiedrich, “‘Felt Him Fire Gun,’ Hotel Worker Says,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1968.
122 Kaiser, pp. 82–83.
123 Quotes from the press conference come from the videotape I viewed at the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
124 Ibid. You really have to see this to believe it. Reddin literally almost choked on the CIA’s name and looked incredibly uncomfortable at having to say the agency’s name out loud or that the name had been highlighted at all.
125 Statement given by Robert Alfeld to Vincent Bugliosi on 11-16-75, in the Exhibits to a Request for a Grand Jury, www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=99873&search=alfeld#relPageId=802&tab=page.
126 Kaiser says it was “some gentleman from the FBI,” p. 88. The Final Report says “Investigators took [Munir] into custody]” (p. 316) and later notes that Officer J.D. Evans and Sgt. G.R. Harrison brought Munir to the Pasadena police station. The Final Report refers to “FBI Agent Sullivan,” first name not mentioned, as being present at the search of Sirhan’s Pasadena home.
127 Kaiser, p. 88.
128 Property report notation between evidence items 37 and 38.
129 Kaiser, p. 89.
130 Kaiser, p. 55.
131 LAPD interview of Mrs. L. Omer, R.N., 6/5/68.
132 Joe McGiniss, “Long, Grim Vigil at the Hospital – Then It’s Over,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 7, 1968.
TRAGEDY
“He made light in everybody. Now he is dead and all is dark.”
AS NEWS OF ROBERT KENNEDY’S DEATH SPREAD, GRIEF SWEPT across the nation. Flags were flown at half-mast. In Los Angeles, drivers left their lights on all day in tribute. President Johnson declared the upcoming Sunday a national day of mourning.
“Robert Kennedy affirmed this country—affirmed the decency of its people, their longing for peace, their desire to improve conditions of life for all,” President Johnson said, as he urged people to “join hands and walk together through this dark night of common anguish into a new dawn of healing unity.”133
Robert Kennedy’s body was placed on one of the several planes that served as Air Force One when President Johnson was aboard. It was the same plane that several of his brother’s cabinet members were on when they learned of President Kennedy’s death.
At the airport, tear-streaked faces pressed against the chain-link fence as some two thousand people sought a last glimpse of the man who might well have become President. Waiting inside the plane were two women who knew more than anyone what Kennedy’s wife Ethel was feeling. Jackie Kennedy and Coretta Scott King had come to be by her side. And the women weren’t the only ones grieving. Frank Mankiewicz wrote of the deep grief of the last of the Kennedy brothers:
After the California primary as I left the hospital room—and RFK—for the last time, I noticed Ted Kennedy standing by the sink in the adjoining bathroom, in semidarkness. I had never seen—nor do I expect ever to see again—a human face so contorted in agony. Ted’s face twisted, his eyes unseeing and beyond tears, beyond pain, truly beyond any feeling I could bring myself to describe, a sight impossible to banish from memory.134
At Elysian Heights School in Los Angeles, 11-year-old Maedon Lau crafted perhaps the most eloquent statement of all: “He made light in everybody. Now he is dead and all is dark.”135
Where world leaders saw tragedy in the passing of this young man who cared so passionately about justice for all people, Howard Hughes saw only opportunity. He pulled out one of his numerous yellow writing pads and scrawled a message to his top lieutenant, Robert Maheu, instructing him to move quickly to hire the Kennedy organization.
Hughes was in some big legal battles, and who better than the indomitable Kennedy machine to help him? First they would mourn, but eventually they’d realize they still needed to feed their families. Hughes wanted to capture the whole organization intact to fight his mounting political battles over nuclear testing in Nevada. It wasn’t that Hughes cared about the environment. He worried about how the tests would affect his personal health and fought to get the tests stopped or at least moved out of state.
He managed to snag one of Kennedy’s top lieutenants, Larry O’Brien, after convincing him he was going to support Hubert Humphrey, with whom O’Brien had accepted a job. Hughes likely didn’t tell O’Brien he was also backing Nixon. Hughes just wanted to own the next president, regardless of political affiliation.
Maheu, on behalf of Howard Hughes, also offered Paul Schrade a place at his ranch in Las Vegas to stay while he was recuperating from his head wound from the pantry shooting, an offer Schrade accepted. There, Schrade became friends with one of the few people Hughes trusted and spoke to in person, John Meier (not to be confused with Johnny Meyer, a publicist, who also worked for Hughes).
LAPD Chief of Detectives Robert Houghton wrote in his book Special Unit Senator that he didn’t learn of the shooting until the morning of June 6. He had been vacationing in the wilds of Yosemite Valley in Northern California, far from televisions, radios, and telephones. It wasn’t until his wife talked to someone along a trail that they learned what had happened. Houghton drove to a store in Wawona and called his office from a pay phone. Houghton’s initial thought was that this was a conspiracy. “There was a pattern of a ‘hired killer’ here rather than murder on impulse, for whatever reason,” Houghton wrote later, citing Sirhan’s lack of identification and the large amount of cash he was carrying.136
The autopsy of President John F. Kennedy had been one of the most poorly documented autopsies ever conducted. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the coroner for Los Angeles County, was determined that Robert Kennedy’s autopsy, in contrast, be completely professional.
Six years earlier, Dr. Noguchi, who had emigrated from Japan to America in the fifties and joined the Los Angeles coroner’s office in 1960 as a deputy medical examiner, had found himself staring at the naked body of Marilyn Monroe, whose death by drugs raised serious controversy. Had she committed suicide? Had someone murdered her?137 Dr. Noguchi’s examination led him to the conclusion that she died of an accidental overdose of self-administered medication.
Now, Dr. Noguchi found himself in front of another beloved and famous figure taken too soon. Noguchi had read a great deal about Ro
bert Kennedy. He took the unusual step of asking that Kennedy’s face be covered while he worked so he would not be distracted by his own grief.
The day before, Noguchi had contacted the forensic community’s version of INTERPOL, the International Reference Organization in Forensic Medicine (INFORM), founded in 1966 and located in Wichita, Kansas. INFORM stored computer records on forensic cases from across America so similarities across state borders can be more readily tracked, and so the science of forensics can be improved through shared knowledge. At INFORM, Noguchi reached the organization’s founder, Bill Eckert.
“Take command of the examination right there in Los Angeles. Fight off any pressure to remove the body to Washington. No Dallas this time,” Eckert told Noguchi. After President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, the President’s body had been forcibly removed from the medical professionals at Parkland Hospital at gunpoint and transported back to Bethesda, Maryland, where a team of inexperienced pathologists had conducted the autopsy under the command of, among others, the CIA-connected Rear Admiral Calvin B. Galloway.138 Neither Eckert nor Noguchi wanted to see that happen again. “This time, bring Washington to you,” Eckert advised.139
Noguchi contacted the director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the AFIP. The director told Noguchi that three experts were standing by and would take a supersonic military jet to Los Angeles in the event of Kennedy’s death, and he asked Noguchi if he’d mind if one of the experts was Colonel Pierre Finck, who had participated in President Kennedy’s autopsy. Noguchi had no objection. The other two were Commander Charles J. Stahl, III, and Dr. Kenneth Earle.
At 8:49 A.M., Noguchi removed a bullet from the back of Kennedy’s neck. This bullet had not been life-threatening but was lodged near his spine, so the doctors did not see a need to remove it while Kennedy was still alive. He inscribed “TN31” on the base of the bullet and gave the bullet to Sergeant Jordan, who gave it to Officer Leroy M. Orozco, who logged it into evidence with the provision that the Crime Lab be notified it was available to test against the “arrestee’s weapon.”
