A Lie Too Big to Fail

by Lisa Pease

  Wright may well have been an itinerant, low-level operative of some kind who perhaps fell in with the wrong crowd in Los Angeles and decided to get out. He apparently checked out of the hotel where he had been staying on June 10, 1968, four days after the assassination.515

  As bizarre as Wright’s account sounded, Marsha Kirz may have seen people discussing the plot at the hotel a little over a week before the assassination. She had attended a luncheon at the Embassy Room on May 28, 1968. Behind the speaker’s stage were curtains. Behind the curtain was an anteroom. During the speech, Kirz heard noise coming from behind the stage so she went to the anteroom behind the curtains to see what was going on. There, she saw “four young men talking in a foreign language. The four men were in kneeling positions in a small circular group.” She told the LAPD:

  One of the males was holding a pointer (round stick approx. 18” long) and appeared to be giving instructions to the other individuals. This person is described as M/Latin; 23/25, 5-8; 130/40; brown curly bush hair; white dress type shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Blk dress type pants. …

  During this period, the other individuals were talking in a foreign language and it appeared they were arguing due to their tone of voice.

  Mrs. Kirz observed this activity for two mins. And then indicated to the foursome to lower their voices. At this time, all the persons turned and looked in Mrs. Kirz’ direction. The group then quieted down and Mrs. Kirz returned to her table.

  Mrs. Kirz thought no more of the matter until she saw the picture of Sirhan in the newspaper. At this point, she became aware of the fact that one of the individuals in the group strongly resembled Sirhan.516

  She correctly identified Sirhan from two different photos. One of the men in this group was a man wearing a white busboy-like jacket.517

  Betty Connolly told the police that right after the shooting, in the lobby outside the Embassy Room, she saw a man in his twenties, about 5’9” with an olive complexion and dark curly hair, wearing a white busboy’s jacket and dark pants. This person said to her, “We killed Kennedy,” and walked away down the lobby. Right after that, a commotion broke out at the entrance of the Embassy Room, probably because people had only then realized Kennedy had been shot. He had an accent that Connolly thought was Spanish, and Connolly said it was possible she had misheard him. Connolly did not identify this person as Sirhan, however, and the height makes him too tall to be the person Plimpton, White, and the others likely saw.518

  Actual busboy Juan Romero told FBI Special Agent Bill Bailey that two days before the assassination, two men claiming to be policemen and wearing “Kennedy” signs on chains around their necks asked Romero how they could obtain white kitchen staff jackets. Romero didn’t know whether to believe they were policemen, as they offered no identification, but he led them to the supply room where the uniforms were stored, only to find it locked.519 Perhaps someone got in later that day, because on June 2, during Senator Kennedy’s appearance at the Ambassador Hotel and later, the Palm Terrace, a couple of witnesses saw two kitchen helpers with Sirhan—or was it a Sirhan lookalike?

  Were three men in busboy outfits involved? On Sunday, June 2, Rose Gallegos noticed three “kitchen helpers” standing around outside in the “patio area.” The Ambassador Hotel had several patios, and it’s not clear which one she meant. Gallegos asked them what they were doing and told them they should get back inside to work. They looked at her for a moment, said nothing, and went inside. After the assassination, Gallegos felt certain the “man in the middle” of these three was Sirhan, “disguised as a kitchen helper,” and contacted the FBI by telephone June 6, 1968.520 Was the man in the middle really Sirhan? Or was it perhaps the person Freddy Plimpton thought shoot Kennedy, a remarkable lookalike?

  Gallegos’s daughter Aida Laffredo also remembered seeing three men in white busboy jackets, one of which she identified as Sirhan. One of the men was about 5’10” and about 30 years old, and the other was shorter than Sirhan (5’1”, she guessed) and slightly older than Sirhan, 25–30. “All three were wearing white jackets as kitchen help would wear.” Laffredo saw these men with Gallegos and placed them near a kitchen door in the ballroom. On Sunday, June 2, Kennedy was speaking at the Cocoanut Grove, not the Embassy Room, so it’s not clear which ballroom or which kitchen door she meant.521

  To Faura, Gallegos said the three men were all wearing black pants and white jackets. She went up to them and addressed them:

  “Are you supposed to be in the hallway? This is the way that the Senator is gonna pass by. Why are you obstructing the way? And they didn’t answer. And I says, “I am talking to you. This is the way it’s supposed to be. You are supposed to be out of the kitchen.522

  At this point, the shortest of the three, the man closer to 5’1”, told her he didn’t speak English. Gallegos thought he looked Mexican, Filipino, or even Hawaiian. His hair was not curly. She thought the man sort of side-eyed her as if trying not to show her his full face. The tall one had glasses, with dark rims. The one Gallegos thought was Sirhan “smiled in such a funny way” that Gallegos told him “You know how to smile but you don’t know how to answer?” At that point, the tall one said, “Come on, let’s get out of here,” and they disappeared into the kitchen. According to Gallegos, the tall man scared her daughter.523

  The FBI’s “X” files may hold a clue to one of these men. When the FBI files on this case were released, they were divided into serials of interviews and FBI memos and communications to and from the FBI Los Angeles Field Office, “Sub H” files of news articles from the media, and “Sub X” files that summarize different parts of the investigation. In these “X” files, the FBI has a section for some unexplained reason named “Investigation concerning Donald David Evangelista, Extra Banquet Waiter at Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, From May 17-June 19, 1968.” Evangelista had reportedly left town suddenly after June 5, which perhaps was why he was investigated. Other than identifying him as someone who had cashed a couple of payroll checks from the Ambassador Hotel in years past, the FBI did not get very far. He was the right age and height to be one of the people seen by others. He was in his mid-twenties and 5’8” and had brown curly hair, albeit “light brown.” He was of Italian descent and his real name was Donald Wickson. The reason for investigating him was not provided. But knowing now the importance of men dressed as busboys or waiters and people familiar with the kitchen there, I can understand why the FBI performed an investigation.

  If Gallegos and her daughter had seen Sirhan on June 2, why wasn’t he in the same clothes on June 4? Very likely, Gallegos and her daughter had seen the Sirhan doppelganger on June 2, and he was identically dressed on June 4. Was there a plot to kill Kennedy on June 2? Was the team there scoping out the landscape to plan for the shooting two days later? Was this all some terrible coincidence?

  A “coincidence” seems the least likely option in light of what Karen Ross saw.

  Karen Ross told the police she had seen a woman who, unbeknownst to Ross, seemed to exactly match the description of the girl seen with Sirhan by both Sandra Serrano and Vincent DiPierro on the night of the primary. On Sunday, June 2, Ross saw a woman in the first row of the Robert Kennedy rally in the Cocoanut Grove. She described her as tall (5’6”), 24–26 years old, husky, with dark blonde hair in a short, puffy flip. She had a round face with almost a double chin and thin eyebrows. She thought the nose might have been “fixed.” She wore a white dress with black polka dots the size of a dime, three-quarter-length sleeves, with a ruffle at the neck and cuffs.524 (Predictably, Lt. Manny Pena had scrawled across the cover sheet of her interview summary, “Don’t Type,” “Polka Dot Story Serrano Phoney,” “Girl in Kitchen I.D. & Int.,” “No further Int[erview].”)525

  Given the appearance of the three busboys and the fact that the girl in the polka dot dress as identified by Karen Ross very closely matched the woman that Serrano and DiPierro had seen, it appears there may have been an effort to kill Kennedy the night of June 2 that failed.
Perhaps that explains something strange that happened on the night of June 3 in Malibu.

  Bugs and tap lines?

  AT ABOUT 10 P.M. ON THE NIGHT OF JUNE 3, A WIDOW, WHOSE NAME is redacted in her FBI report, heard someone ring her doorbell in Malibu. She went to the door and without opening it asked who it was. “It’s the telephone repairman,” a male voice said. “Are you kidding?” the woman asked, given the late hour. “No, I’m not,” the man said. The woman became frightened and immediately called the Los Angeles Sheriff’s office in Malibu to report the incident. The Sheriffs said there was nothing they could do. The next day, June 4, she learned that Robert Kennedy was staying in the house next door.526

  When Kennedy was killed on June 5, the woman’s son apparently reached out to the FBI, feeling there may have been some connection.527 In the days before high-tech surveillance, bugs had to be placed manually on phone lines. Was someone attempting to access the phone line from the neighbor’s yard in order to better estimate his arrival time at the hotel on June 4, 1968?

  Oddly enough, phone repairmen and phone issues showed up at a couple of other key points in the story. At 1:38 A.M., a little more than an hour after the shooting on June 5, the LAPD’s “Unusual Occurrence Log” contains this entry: “R unit reporting telephone repairman at Cent. Rec. Hosp. for major repair. R-40 at scene checking out repairman.” Central Receiving was the Hospital Kennedy was taken to first, before he was referred to Good Samaritan. It strains credulity there would suddenly, coincidentally be a major telephone failure requiring middle-of-the-night work. It would be far more believable that the conspirators needed to know as much as possible about Kennedy’s condition and whether he would survive and made an attempt to get more data, but by the time they got to Central, Kennedy had been moved to Good Samaritan.

  An even stranger phone-related entry showed up in the contemporaneous E.C.C. Liaison with Other Agencies log of events. At 4:30 P.M. on June 5, the log states:

  Earlier today, a “Mr. … Crosby of the American Telephone Co.’s gov’t. unit in Arlington, VA. (telephone 703/521-4100)” phoned to advise that the teletype circuit ordered by Defense Dept. into Police Bldg. was soon to be installed. Crosby was advised that LAPD had not approved physical installation of any such teletype equipment, but that circuits could be run to Pac. Tel. Co. terminal strip in Pol. Bldg. if desired; but no physical install of TT machine until approved by LAPD. (Later info. that the circuit and machine now going to Shfs. Jail on Bauchert Street, but this to be discussed more on Thursday by Shfs. Dept.).

  Why did the Defense Department need a direct line into police headquarters? And if they needed the police, why was this suddenly rerouted to the Sheriff’s jail instead? The LAPD is city government. The Sheriffs answer to Los Angeles County. You don’t just move a line randomly from one to another. They are entirely different entities with wholly different missions and personnel.

  The mention of the jail is the likely clue. Although Sirhan was apprehended by the LAPD, he was soon after transferred to the Sheriff’s jail. Arlington is near the CIA’s headquarters, and the CIA has, on occasion, used the Defense Department as a cover agency for its actions.

  CIA communications to Special Unit Senator did appear in the files as if they had come from a teletype machine, on perforated paper. But it would be hard to believe that a special teletype line was installed just for matters related to Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Was someone attempting to tap a communications line in the guise of installing a new line?

  Someone signaling?

  NOTHING COULD HAVE BEEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN KNOWING when Kennedy was about to enter the pantry. Everyone involved had to get into place. Signals needed to be passed along so the team would know when Kennedy was about to enter. Curiously, a couple of witnesses reported a man that appeared to be “signaling” to someone in a strange way when Kennedy left the stage to head for the pantry. Gloria Farr and her companion Vernon Thompson, who worked for NBC as an electronics technician, saw a man make some sort of signaling motion at the edge of the crepe paper that covered the edges of a platform behind the stage that had a staircase. This was near the stairs that led down to the Ambassador Room below. Originally, the plan had been to take Kennedy out that way, down the staircase to speak to the overflow crowd. But Kennedy always spoke to the press, and that would have necessitated him coming back up to talk to the press and then to go down again and out to the Factory, where the victory party was being held.

  Because of this, a row of people with arms linked prevented people from going behind the stage, as Farr found out when she tried to enter that area. She said a man in a “blue wooly [sic] sports coat” prevented her from crossing that line. Thompson was already in the anteroom as Farr was trying to get into it. Just as Kennedy finished his speech, Farr saw something that really struck her:

  There’s a man at the top of the stairs, and he pushed the crepe paper aside, looking down underneath the platform and I thought to myself, “I wonder what’s under there. I wonder if it’s a microphone or what is it.” And then he did this a second time just before Vern said to me, “He’s leaving through the kitchen.” He pushed this crepe paper aside as if he were signalling to someone down there. And the thing that struck me about it was that both Vern and I noticed it and hadn’t mentioned it to him until afterwards [sic]. We were on our way out. They wouldn’t let us out and we were sitting in the car waiting and we were talking about it, and I said, “you know, the funniest thing happened.” I said, “I saw this man pushing aside the crepe paper.” And he said, “Did you see that?” He said, “I did too.” And I said “What do you think it was?” And he said “Well, I thought it was maybe someone checking to see if the stairs were pulled out far enough for Senator Kennedy to walk down.”528

  She said the man was on the “first step” that led down from the stage, and the platform edges and stair edges were surrounded with crepe paper that hung to the floor. If someone wanted a good place to hide that will allow them to go either way on a moment’s notice, that would have been a great place, as the assassin could move quickly either way. This may sound like a childish way to stage an assassination, but attorney and author Bill Simpich sent me documents showing the CIA at one time had a plan to kill Castro at one point in a kitchen with a guy hidden under some stairs.

  And maybe the foot was a signal but not to someone under the stairs. Maybe it was a signal to someone further away—perhaps at the pantry door—that Kennedy was coming. As you will see, it’s possible there were assassins both downstairs and upstairs, given how no one could be certain until the last few minutes which way Kennedy would go when he left the stage.

  How did Sirhan get into the pantry?

  THANE CESAR WAS ONE OF TWO GUARDS FOR MOST OF THE NIGHT charged with keeping people who didn’t have the requisite passes out of the pantry. Yet Sirhan was allowed to move in and out freely, and was never reported to be wearing passes or badges at any point that night. How was that possible?

  Cesar, who had worked only one day for Ace Security before, during the last week in May, did not appear to be checking anyone for badges or passes. Only people with press passes were to be allowed in that area, which led to the Colonial Room, the temporary headquarters for members of the printed press. But Dr. Marcus McBroom, who had no press credentials, entered the pantry around 10:30 P.M. on his way to the Embassy Room, and he was far from the only person to get in without credentials.

  In the pantry, McBroom noticed a person he later believed to be Sirhan sitting on one of the steam tables. The person wore a pullover top and jeans, so he stood out among the kitchen workers clad in white tops and black pants.

  Eara Marchman had also been allowed unchallenged into the pantry, despite her lack of credentials, and saw a man she later identified as Sirhan arguing with a uniformed guard by the swinging doors, which was likely Cesar. Her friend Rose Perezsklsy also told the police that Marchman had seen Sirhan arguing with the uniformed guard. Cesar would claim never to have seen or
talked to Sirhan before the shooting.529

  The girl in the polka dot dress

  PERHAPS THE MOST INTERESTING OF THE “HELPERS” WAS A GIRL in a polka dot dress that pulled the focus of a surprising number of witnesses. Inspector John Powers told the Los Angeles Times that had the girl been found, “she would have been considered a ‘principal’ in the case.”530

  As we saw in early chapters, Sandra Serrano and Vince DiPierro saw Sirhan in the company of a girl in a white dress with dark polka dots who had a turned-up nose and dark brown hair. DiPierro said the girl appeared to be “holding” Sirhan as he stood on the tray rack along the southern part of the room before crossing north, pulling out a gun and firing at Kennedy. Serrano saw the girl enter the hotel up the southwest fire escape with a man in a gold sweater and Sirhan. Immediately after the shooting, the girl and the guy who was not Sirhan ran back out with the girl saying excitedly, “We shot him,” as if it was a good thing.

  Dr. Marcus McBroom told the FBI that when he ran into the Embassy Room to find a doctor to help Kennedy, “he remembered seeing a Caucasian female about twenty-five, 5’4”, 126 pounds, moving toward the exit.” McBroom said the woman “was wearing a white dress with black polka dots and definitely had dark hair.” He felt her behavior was unusual because “she appeared much calmer than anyone else in the room, and appeared to be trying to leave the room as soon as possible.”531

  A number of witnesses that night noticed her, allowing us to track her progress through the hotel on June 4th and 5th.

  CONRAD SEIM

  Photographer Conrad Seim had been approached around 9:30 P.M. by a girl in a white dress with black or navy polka dots with a “funny nose” he thought may have been broken at one time. She was Caucasian, between 25 and 30 years old, approximately 5’5” or 5’6”, with short, dark brown hair and an olive complexion. She asked him if she could borrow his press pass. He told her no, but she came back up to him again about 15 minutes later to ask again. This description matches that of the girl seen by Sandra Serrano and Vince DiPierro.