by Lisa Pease
But even at a solid count of 14 bullets, we may still be a few bullets short. Recall how the veteran crime reporter Robert Wiedrich, who had flown in from Chicago and visited the pantry within hours of the shooting, was told by the policeman in the pantry at the time that bullets had been removed from the center doorframe paneling. Wiedrich described seeing an “8-foot strip of molding” that had been “torn by police from the center post of the double doors” from which “a crime laboratory technician’s probe” had removed “two .22-caliber bullets that had gone wild.”368 Dan Moldea tracked Wiedrich down in later years to confirm details of his story:
Clearly, Wiedrich did not realize the significance of what he had written. … When I finally interviewed Wiedrich—who had not seen the bullets removed—and explained the significance of what he had written for the first time, he paused momentarily and then stood by his story. “That’s exactly what happened,” Wiedrich insisted. “That’s exactly what I saw, and that’s exactly what I was told.”369
If two bullets had been removed from the center divider molding, in addition to the two removed from the center divider post, that meant 16 bullets had been fired. The Hearst video only shows the molding from the southwest side of the double doors, not the center frame molding. So these could be two additional bullets to our 14-bullet count. Angelo DiPierro also swore that a bullet was removed from the center doorframe molding, not post, as the post had not yet been exposed at the time Angelo examined it. In an affidavit for Vince Bugliosi in connection with the Owen lawsuit discussed in the previous chapter, Angelo recounted the following:
After Senator Kennedy had been removed from the pantry, many people, including the police and myself, started to look over the entire pantry area to piece together what had happened. That same morning, while we were still looking around, I observed a small caliber bullet lodged about a quarter of an inch into the wood on the center divider of the two swinging doors. Several police officers also observed the bullet. The bullet was approximately 5 feet 8 or 9 inches from the ground. The reason I specifically recall the approximate height of the bullet location is because I remember thinking at the time that if I had entered the pantry just before the shooting, the bullet may have struck me in the forehead, because I am approximately 5 feet 11½ inches tall. …
I am quite familiar with guns and bullets, having been in the Infantry for 3½ years. There is no question in my mind that this was a bullet and not a nail or any other object. The base of the bullet was round and from all indications, it appeared to be a .22 caliber bullet.370
Martin Patruski, during the LAPD’s initial re-creation of the crime in the pantry, was told by one of the police officers, who at that early stage could have no idea he was providing evidence of conspiracy, that two bullets had been removed from the center doorframe.371
There’s another possible bullet that was discussed in the previous chapter: the second of the “fatal bullets” from Kennedy’s head that Wolfer referred to in his log, the bullet which could have been in the second of the “two bullet tracks” in Kennedy’s head as discussed in the previous chapter. The official story is that only one bullet entered Kennedy’s skull. But if two did, that could bring the total bullet count to 17 bullets.
And then there’s the missing chunk of the wall to the left of the southwest doorframe. A triangular piece of the paneling is missing, suggesting another bullet or two were found there. In an interview with Dan Moldea, Charles Collier, the civilian photographer for the LAPD’s crime lab, said investigators asked him to photograph bullet holes in the walls—“Most of them were in the walls,” Collier told Moldea. And lest anyone think Collier had confused the doors with walls, Collier told Moldea there were bullet holes “in the doors, too.”372 Moldea asked how he could be certain he had photographed pictures of bullet holes. Collier told him, “A bullet hole looks like a bullet hole—if you’ve photographed enough of them.”373
If there was any bullet hole in any wall outside the doorframes, we’re at a possible 17 or 18 bullets, depending on what you believe about Wolfer’s references to “fatal bullets,” plural, from Kennedy’s head. And that’s without even examining the somewhat magical trajectory by which the police reduced 12 bullet entry points in its official scenario to eight bullets by having them enter and exit the clothes of one person before lodging in another. For example, the bullet that passed harmlessly through Kennedy’s coat at a steep upward angle was supposed to be, in the official account, the bullet that entered Paul Schrade’s forehead. But that would only have made sense if Schrade were in front of Kennedy and looking down on him, rather than behind him and looking ahead, as he was. A bullet does not pull a big U-turn in mid-air! No matter how you slice the evidence, there were more bullets fired in the pantry than the police would acknowledge.
Even nine bullets means a conspiracy
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE THERE WERE 18 OR EVEN 13 BULLETS to understand that if a single bullet hole existed in the pantry, if there was even a single bullet in the doorframes anywhere, we necessarily had at least two shooters, as Sirhan’s gun could hold only eight bullets. It would be odd indeed if the veteran crime reporter, the FBI, the LAPD officers, the hotel maître d’ and all the other witnesses were simply mistaken about all of these. That is possible in the sense that anything is possible. But it is not the reasonable conclusion to be made from of all these accounts.
Seeing this extraordinary count of the bullets makes it more obvious why the LAPD felt the need to label log pages with bullets on them “CONFIDENTIAL.” Someone apparently kept careful track of and disposed of any bullets that would make it obvious that more than one gun had been fired in the pantry.
In his book on the case, when he gets to the point where he discusses additional bullet holes in the pantry, Moldea says if the FBI’s William Bailey was correct, if he really saw a bullet, “then there is no doubt that at least two guns were fired that night.” But Moldea caveats that with the following:
If Bailey is right, it would mean that DeWayne Wolfer had literally perjured himself on numerous occasions during his sworn statements about whether bullets had been recovered at the crime scene. And Wolfer has hung tough all of these years and even filed a defamation suite, insisting that he found no bullets in the walls and the doorframes of the kitchen pantry. Was he capable of committing this monumental act of obstruction?
To continue to suggest that Wolfer lied is also to suggest that Wolfer, the officers in the SID, and the LAPD wittingly engaged in a conspiracy to permit the escape of Sirhan’s co-conspirators. And that defies the evidence, as well as logic.
But Moldea is inaccurate on this point. That assertion does not “defy” the evidence and is in fact well supported by it. And the LAPD did not have to “wittingly engage” in a “conspiracy to permit the escape of Sirhan’s co-conspirators” to have ignored evidence of conspiracy. The LAPD provably engaged in an act that allowed co-conspirators to escape when Inspector Powers ordered Sharaga to cancel the broadcast of an additional suspect because Rafer Johnson saw only one man. It was simply too soon not to pursue every lead, especially when considering Rafer Johnson’s account, as Johnson had specifically said he hadn’t looked around to see if any other shooters were involved.
We also know that the California Court of Appeals stopped just short of accusing Wolfer of perjury. And numerous people as well as the physical evidence from the crime scene support what Bailey, not Wolfer, contended was there: bullet holes in the doorframes and even, if the LAPD’s crime scene photographer was correct, in the walls as well.
The Rampart Scandal
PROVABLY, EVIDENCE IN THIS CASE WAS ALTERED, DESTROYED, and possibly hidden as well. This is where I part ways with Dan Moldea. Moldea has done some solid investigative work, for which all researchers should be grateful, but Moldea has shown himself to be incapable of believing that Wolfer, other members of the LAPD, and the D.A.’s office could have lied about the evidence.
I don’t suffer from that same
naïveté, perhaps because I have lived in Los Angeles for a few decades and know the LAPD’s history. What non-locals may not know is that the very same Rampart Division responsible for collecting bullets, collecting crime evidence, and interviewing dozens of pantry witnesses became embroiled in what became known as the “Rampart Scandal” in the late 1990s.
Although the investigation into the Rampart Division was triggered by the shooting of a black LAPD officer by a white one in 1997, the subsequent investigation quickly broadened into one that exposed a culture of corruption that had been in place since the 1950s, well before Senator Kennedy was assassinated. In fact, the investigation revealed the LAPD to be so corrupt it was put into federal receivership for several years.
USC professor Erwin Chemerinsky was asked to provide an independent assessment of the “Rampart Scandal Incident Report and came to the following conclusions:
Rampart is the worst scandal in the history of Los Angeles. Police officers framed innocent individuals by planting evidence and committing perjury to gain convictions. Nothing is more inimical to the rule of law than police officers, sworn to uphold the law, flouting it and using their authority to convict innocent people. Innocent men and women pleaded guilty to crimes they did not commit and were convicted by juries because of the fabricated cases against them.374
Boston University Professor Edwin Delattre echoed Chemerinsky’s sentiments in his book Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing:
“Thug code” is a way of life in some police precincts and units. The distinguished former assistant chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, David Dotson, wrote: “[A]t bottom, the problems at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division are cultural in nature, the result of an institutional mind-set first conceived in the 1950s….” Were that not true, Rampart Division personnel could not possibly have covered up their depravity as long as they did. …
Those cops told implausible lies about probable cause. Their supervisors either tolerated or encouraged such lies, and the judges who should have known better swallowed the lies without question. Such a “culture” kills morality completely. Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky rightly insists that the Rampart depredations are “a dagger aimed at the heart of constitutional democracy.”375
Professor Delattre derided the title of the official report on the scandal, the “Rampart Area Corruption Incident,” by noting “What police did in the Rampart Division was not mere corruption, and it was no incident.”376 Delattre explained the scope of the scandal was “so heinous and widespread” that nearly one hundred convictions of past cases were overturned and some three thousand cases were up for review. The investigation revealed that LAPD officers “brutalized suspects, submitted false reports, [and] lied in official proceedings.”377
If you feel someone is guilty, you may not be upset to see the police framing them for a crime they committed. But Chemerinsky challenged us to consider how we would have felt if the police did this to a family member:
I believe that the challenge for everyone dealing with the Rampart scandal in any way is to constantly think that it is our son or daughter, or brother or sister, or father or mother, who has been … framed by the police planting evidence and lying in court to gain a conviction.378
For Moldea or anyone to say officers of the LAPD wouldn’t frame an innocent person is simply ahistorical. It has happened, often, and especially within—though not limited to—the Rampart Division.
What witnesses heard
ONE QUESTION THAT BOTHERS SOME IS THIS: IF THERE WERE SO many shots in the pantry, how come that many shots weren’t reported by witnesses? There are several explanations for this. First, the majority of witnesses didn’t realize they were hearing gunshots at first, and those that did were hardly sitting there counting the shots. They were looking for cover, trying to escape, or trying to protect others. And the majority of witnesses didn’t even hear the eight shots the police told us must have been fired:
“When I heard the shots, it sounded like one shot, a pause, then two loud shots. The first shot sounded muffled.” – SUS transcript of Earl Williman interview, July 23, 1968
“He was about halfway through the room when he heard six little pops. There was only one shot, a pause, then a burst of shots. His first thought was that an electrical short had occurred as he could see flashes.” – SUS interview of Lon Rubin by Collins, Patchett and MacArthur, September 1968
“I heard about five explosions.” – Virginia Guy, LAPD interview summary from June 6, 1968
“Then saw flashes and heard firecrackers (hollow-sounding). She heard what sounded like a machine gun—5, 6 or 7 shots.” – SUS interview of Pamela Lemke, July 8, 1968
Dick Aubry counted only six shots. Virginia Guy heard three. Delores Beilenson heard three then lost track. Larry Dean heard only five. There are many more who heard less than eight shots. There was certainly no consensus among the earwitnesses as to how many shots were fired.
That said, several witnesses did report hearing more than eight shots, and a few mentioned they thought multiple people were firing. Many of the witnesses described the shots as being jumbled together, creating a rapid crackling that sounded like firecrackers. It would have been impossible to determine the exact number of shots if they were fired nearly simultaneously. A few witnesses compared the sound to that of a machine gun because the shots came so rapidly.
The following witnesses heard what each thought was likely more than eight shots, and this is not a complete list:
“In total, he heard what he thought was 10 to 12 shots.” – SUS interview report of Booker Griffin, July 25, 1968
“After the Kennedy party had passed, she heard cracking [sic] noises which sounded like exploding firecrackers. She immediately realized, however, that the sounds were gunshot sounds and they were in rapid succession, a total of about 8 or 10 shots.” – FBI interview report of Suzanne Locke, June 7, 1968
“At the time of the shooting, he heard between 5 and 10 sharp shots but could not distinguish them as individual reports.” – SUS interview of Jesse Unruh, July 21, 1968
“I thought I heard at least about 10 shots, but I know I heard less on the radio, but it sounded like an awful lot. It wasn’t one or two. It was a lot of shots.” – SUS interview of Estelyn Duffy, June 5, 1968. An abbreviated summary of Duffy’s comments in the SUS files includes “Sounded like a whip (shots) 8/10,” indicating she told them she heard eight to ten shots.
“He … heard a string of lighted firecrackers going off. … When the firecracker sounds had gone off … he suddenly realized shots had been fired. His reaction was that the shots must have come from an automatic weapon since they were so rapid.” – FBI Interview of Michael Rhodes, July 15, 1968
“One witness said those shots came so close together that he could scarcely believe they were fired from one gun. A reporter who heard the shots from an adjoining room said they sounded almost like they came from a machine gun, so short was the burst of fire.” – Walter Cronkite on CBS in the early hours after the shooting
“Two or three seconds after Kennedy entered the kitchen, he heard 8 or 9 shots in quick succession. (He thought there had been two guns.)” – LAPD interview summary of Roy Mills, August 9, 1968
“After the third pop I realized it was a gun being fired, it seemed to me that I heard at least 8 or 10 shots.” – LAPD interview of Carol Ann Breshears, June 5, 1968
Other guns in the pantry
MOST RESEARCHERS HAVE FIXATED ON THANE EUGENE CESAR, the guard with a gun who was at Kennedy’s right elbow just as the shooting broke out, as the only other shooter and co-conspirator. And indeed, it’s difficult to imagine Thane Cesar not being involved. He was in the perfect position to have been the gunman who killed Kennedy or to have held Kennedy, shielding shooters from view as they fired upon Kennedy from nearly contact range. And every time he talked about what happened in the pantry, his story changed. The kindest thing we can say about Cesar is that he failed u
tterly in his job. It was his charge to keep the pantry free of interlopers, and he did not. When he took hold of Kennedy’s arm, his job became to escort Kennedy safely through the pantry, and he did not. At least three witnesses—Don Schulman, Lisa Urso and Richard Lubic—saw Cesar pull his gun.
“[T]he security guard had a gun and I think he went like this [drawing a gun] or he put it in a holster or something…” – Lisa Urso to Dr. Phil Melanson
“Why would a security guard have his gun pointed toward the floor, instead of at Sirhan?” – Richard Lubic to David Talbot, recounting the question on his mind during the shooting379
When Lubic asked the LAPD, they told him “Don’t bring this up, don’t be talking about this.” Lubic was questioned during the trial but not about the guard with his gun out during the shooting.380
Schulman was adamant the guard had fired his gun:
“I’m pretty doggone sure he fired his gun.” – Don Schulman to the D.A.’s office in 1971, reiterating his earlier comment that he saw the guard fire, made on air immediately after the shooting
Jesus Perez was very near Kennedy when he was shot, but when the police showed him the gun taken from Sirhan by Rafer, Perez said “No, I think it’s bigger than that.” He indicated the gun was about a foot long, hardly the tiny snub-nosed gun from Sirhan. If someone had a silencer on a revolver, the barrel would have looked long indeed.381 The gun Cesar owned at the time, a nine-shot H&R .22, had a longer nose than the Sirhan gun did. Perez, as you’ll recall, was very fearful when he talked to the police. You’d be fearful too, if you saw a man in a security uniform commit a crime that was blamed on someone else.
But Cesar did not appear to be the only one who fired a gun in the pantry, as you’ll see in this chapter and the next. For the rest of this chapter, we’ll focus more on where the guns were rather than who was holding them. In the next chapter, we’ll look at potential conspirators.
