From
CITIZINE RESEARCH.
Physical evidence and eyewitness testimony give reason to reconsider Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction for the 1968 murder of Robert F. Kennedy.
By Thom White
June 5, 2005 LOS ANGELES -- The L.A. Unified School District is about to knock down the historic Ambassador Hotel to build some schools -- another example of L.A. tearing down and paving over what is supposed to be such a proud civic history.
Demolition is set to begin while a legal petition rests before the California Supreme Court presenting evidence that calls into question what really happened in the most important event to take place during the Ambassador’s 85-year history: the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
In the summer of 1969, a Palestinian immigrant by the improbable and unmistakeably foreign name of Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of murdering the candidate for the U.S. presidency. However, bullet hole evidence, the L.A. County coroner’s autopsy report, and eyewitness accounts of the assassination and crime scene investigation, all provide substantial evidence to support the claim that it was not physically possible for Sirhan Sirhan to have been Robert F. Kennedy’s murderer, and that it was another person in the jam-packed pantry (directly behind and to the right of Kennedy) who committed this murder at midnight. So does Sirhan Sirhan deserve a retrial? And what is L.A. covering up now with all this fresh tar and asphalt? To really know, you need some details.
The Rise of Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis Kennedy came from the wealthy and politically powerful Kennedy and Fitzgerald clans. His father, industrialist Joseph P. Kennedy, rose to great wealth during Prohibition, and prominence under FDR, and set the stage for the political careers of his sons. Robert managed older brother John’s successful run for Senate in 1952, and then John’s bigger run for the presidency in 1960. In November 1960, John defeated Vice-President Richard M. Nixon to be elected president of the United States, although evidence emerged later that Kennedy’s wins in Texas and Illinois (which handed him the national victory) were the result of voter fraud. Further research has shown that Kennedy’s running mate, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, had won previous Senate elections in Texas in 1948 and 1954 through voter fraud.
President Jack named Robert to be the most powerful lawyer in the land, Attorney General, and Bobby did his best to help guide the Kennedy administration’s “cold war liberal” legislative agenda. After his brother’s murder by gunmen in the streets of Dallas on 11/22, Robert stayed on for a turn under LBJ. He then resigned to run for the U.S. Senate in New York, and he won that election in 1964.
By 1967, the number of dead and wounded U.S. soldiers being returned from Vietnam had reached an unpopular level. Catholic Democrat Eugene McCarthy, a Senator from Minnesota, began campaigning against President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 on a clear platform of negotiated peace with the Communists, eventual withdrawal of Americans from the foreign strife, and an end to U.S. military control of the southern end of Indochina. When Johnson barely edged out McCarthy in the first Democratic primary in New Hampshire (a victory for McCarthy), the President announced he would not seek re-election. Senator Robert Kennedy and Vice President Hubert Humphrey would throw their hats in the ring to challenge McCarthy for the nomination.
In Spring 1968, Sen. McCarthy and Sen. Kennedy split 80% of the voters in many of the Democratic state primaries, while V.P. Humphrey would pull in 10-15%. On the Oregon ballot in late May, Gene McCarthy pulled off a big win against Kennedy. Kennedy turned to concentrate his resources on winning the state primary in California, where he was thought to have an advantage. A victory there on June 4 would give him the momentum to gain the Party nomination at what was to be a contentious Democratic Convention in Chicago.
Scene of the crime
Robert Kennedy’s California campaign was headquartered at the Ambassador Hotel. By nightfall on June 4, campaign workers and media crowded the Ambassador’s Embassy Ballroom, watching television for ballot results as the evening progressed. Kennedy himself was in the Royal Suite and the Court TV Crime Library describes the scene:
RFK remained watchful, cautious, glued to his television in the Royal Suite where good friends, political allies and a few celebrities encircled him. Comedian Milton Berle and football great Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier were there, and so was Decathlon champ Rafer Johnson. Occasionally, Kennedy leaned over to joke with one of these men or to seek advice from one of his aides and advisors - Pierre Salinger, Ted Sorenson or press secretary Fred Mankiewicz, for example ... Wife Ethel, in her early pregnancy with their eleventh child, relaxed on the sofa near her husband …
By 11:30 p.m., a victory for Kennedy seemed imminent. With wife Ethel and his entourage, the senator moved to the ballroom where, upon entering, he was greeted by frantic applause. Red-white-and-blue ribbons decorated the wall behind the speaker’s podium and balloons colored the ceiling overhead. Flashbulbs popped, and music from an orchestra sent the sea of heads before the stage bobbing in rhythm. Raising his arms for attention, a smiling “Bobby,” as his fans called him, thanked the room for their great support and, adding a bit of humor, thanked pitcher Don Drysdale for winning his sixth straight shut-out that afternoon.
Then the speech turned serious. Kennedy addressed the fact that the nation needed to overcome racial divisions and other social evils (the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King had taken place exactly two months before to the day), as well as an end to the unpopular war in Vietnam. Concluding his speech with a victory sign and the words, “…now on to Chicago, and let’s win there!” the house once again broke loose. “We want Bobby! We want Bobby!” sang the house. Grinning, he turned towards the side door that would take him through a food preparation area, a short cut to where the press was waiting in the Colonial Room beyond. It was now 12:15 a.m., June 5.
According L.A. Rams tackle Rosey Grier’s testimony to the LAPD, at the end of Kennedy’s speech, the group on-stage had planned to exit to the right to head to a press conference, but at the last moment, the head of RFK’s security, Bill Barry, told Kennedy and the entourage to take an alternate route through a pantry area, apparently to avoid some press along the way. According to Grier:
“Well, first of all, we were up on the stage, and they said they was going off to the right of the stage, and at the last minute ... Bill Barry decided to change and go a different direction because people had found out which way the senator was going to go, and we had to go downstairs to another ballroom where people were waiting. This was a press gathering here, and so Bill Barry and someone else took the senator down and I was lifting Mrs. Kennedy down from the stairs and we started walking....”
Barry then fell behind the group, staying by the stage to help Ethel Skakel Kennedy from the stage, while Robert Kennedy and crew headed down a ramp through double doors into the kitchen pantry. Lisa Pease describes the scene of the murder in her invaluable 1998 investigative piece in Probe magazine, “Sirhan & the RFK Assassination”:
Maître d’ Karl Uecker gripped Kennedy’s right wrist with his left hand. Ace Guard Service employee Thane Eugene Cesar joined Kennedy as he went through the double doors into the pantry, touching his right elbow. Bill Barry, an ex-FBI man who was ostensibly serving as Kennedy’s bodyguard, had fallen behind Kennedy as he entered the pantry.
As they headed east through the room, Kennedy stopped every few feet to shake the hands of hotel workers. The last hand he shook was that of busboy Juan Romero. Uecker pulled Kennedy as he moved forward. The tiny kitchen held, by official count, 77 people (including Sirhan and the shooting victims) who were possible witnesses to what happened next.
Uecker related that with Kennedy still in hand, he felt someone sliding in between himself and the steam table about two feet away from where he stood. Busboy Juan Romero and waiter Martin Patrusky saw Sirhan approach Kennedy, as did Lisa Urso, a San Diego high school student. Urso saw Sirhan push his way past her towards the Senator. She thought he was going to shake his hand, then saw a movement that made her stop in her tracks in frightened anticipation. Vincent DiPierro, a waiter who had observed Sirhan standing and talking to a pretty girl in a white, polka dotted dress earlier that night, heard someone yell “Grab him” a split second before the shots were fired. Somebody reported Sirhan saying, “Kennedy, you son of a bitch,” and then firing at Kennedy with his hand outstretched.
Uecker felt Kennedy slip from his grasp as he fell to the ground. Screams were heard as bystanders Paul Schrade, William Weisel, Ira Goldstein, Erwin Stroll and Elizabeth Evans were hit by flying bullets. Kennedy suffered gunshot wounds in three different places, with a fourth bullet passing through his coat without entering the skin.
Uecker immediately grabbed Sirhan’s hand and forced it down onto the steam table. A swarm of men descended upon Sirhan, surrounding him, holding the gun. Decathlon champion Rafer Johnson, Grier, George Plimpton and others formed a barricade around Sirhan, one holding his head, another with a finger in the trigger to prevent additional shots, another grabbing Sirhan in a crushing bear hug.
Uecker and DiPierro reported initially hearing two shots, followed by a flurry. DiPierro told the LAPD, “I saw the first two go off. I saw them actually.” Several witnesses reported hearing one or two shots, and then a pause. Then all hell broke loose. Witnesses not within eyesight of what was happening thought they were hearing balloons popping or firecrackers. Los Angeles photographer Boris Yaro, in a phone interview with Robert Morrow, recounted his memory of the event:
“There was either one or two shots fired. O.K. And then, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. There was a pregnant pause between those two because my initial impression was some jackass has set off firecrackers in here; because I got hit in the face with debris...And then it hit me. Oh, my God, it’s happened again.”
Sirhan was eventually subdued, and taken into police custody.
The official line arrived at dawn. June 5: America awakens to the news that beloved Bobby Kennedy had been shot by a Middle-Eastern waiter who approached the Senator among the other well-wishers, not to offer a handshake of goodwill, but with eight rounds of deadly bullet fire. The madman had shot Kennedy in the head and injured five others, before being heroically put in an armlock by members of the celebrity entourage. After being roughed up by the angry crowd at the Ambassador, the Kennedy killer was ceremoniously handed over by State Assemblyman Jesse Unruh to the police.
At 9 a.m. on June 5, hours after the shootout, members of the Sirhan clan arrived at the police station saying they had seen pictures of their brother on the television. Within hours, police ransacked Sirhan’s mother’s residence in Pasadena (696 E. Howard) and turned up notebook scribblings by Sirhan about how “RFK must die” and how killing Kennedy was becoming an “obsession.”
June 6: America learns that RFK is dead and had been murdered by the crazed Palestinian partisan Sirhan Sirhan who had a grudge against Kennedy because the Senator supported selling “Phantom” jets to Israel. Ironically, Robert Kennedy would expire on the first anniversary of Israel’s Six Day Invasion of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria which had commenced on 6/6/67.
It was an “open and shut” case: Sirhan Sirhan had murdered Robert F. Kennedy. But consider the following evidence:
Follow the bullets
There is evidence of more than eight bullets being fired. Sirhan’s gun only had eight chambers, and there was no time for him to reload, so for the “crazed lone gunman” theory to be plausible, there could only be evidence of eight bullets fired.
As many as five or six ceiling panels were removed by the LAPD investigating team, and lead criminalogist DeWayne Wolfer is quoted as saying, “It’s unbelievable how many holes there are in the kitchen ceiling.”
Wolfer filled his official report with “magic bullets” (bullets #2, 4, and 6 that supposedly struck more than one person) to stay within the eight-bullet parameters and reach the desired conclusion. Here is how the LAPD accounted for the bullets:
Bullet #1: struck Senator Robert F. Kennedy behind the right ear.
Bullet #2: passed through RFK’s right shoulder pad and struck campaign aide Paul Schrade in the forehead.
Bullet #3: entered RFK’s back inches below the top of the right shoulder.
Bullet #4: entered RFK’s back, about one inch below bullet #3, but exited the senator’s body through the right front chest.
Bullet #5: struck Ira Goldstein in the right rear buttock.
Bullet #6: passed through Goldstein’s pants leg, struck the cement floor, and, ricocheted onto Irwin Stroll’s left leg.
Bullet #7: struck William Weisel in the left abdomen.
Bullet #8: reflected off the plaster ceiling to strike Elizabeth Evans in the head.
Robert Kennedy was shot three times, and five others were shot (that would make eight bullets); one bullet went through Kennedy’s clothing and exited out, and the same happened to Ira Goldstein who had a bullet pass through his clothing without piercing skin. So that would make ten.
Additionally, there was an Associated Press photo published June 5, 1968, which showed two LAPD officers pointing out two bullets lodged in the door jamb between the double doors where Kennedy had entered the pantry, and this would make 12 bullets. Researcher Lisa Pease argues, “If there were more than eight bullets, Sirhan was not a deranged, lone gunman, but somehow part of a conspiracy which has yet to be officially acknowledged.” According to Lisa Pease:
In 1975, Vincent Bugliosi, who was then working with [Paul] Schrade [a Kennedy aide who was shot] to get the case reopened, tracked down the two police officers depicted in the photograph. To that time their identities had been unknown. Bugliosi identified the two officers as Sgt. Charles Wright and Sgt. Robert Rozzi. Both Wright and Rozzi were sure that what they observed was not only a bullet hole, but a hole containing a bullet …
Investigative reporter Jonn Christian found a Chicago Tribune article authored by Robert Weidrich. Weidrich had evidently been in the pantry as the doorjamb was being removed, for his account contained the following information:
“On a low table lay an 8-foot strip of molding, torn by police from the center post of the double doors leading from the ballroom. These were the doors through which Sen. Kennedy had walked....Now the molding bore the scars of a crime laboratory technician’s probe as it had removed two .22-caliber bullets that had gone wild.”
The LAPD report said these holes were not from bullets and may have been caused by collisions with a food cart, but even FBI agent William Bailey said that for him and other agents, “There was no questions in any of our minds as to the fact that they were bullet holes.”
These bullets are not accounted for in Wolfer’s LAPD report. This door jamb was destroyed under a court order in 1969 soon after Sirhan’s conviction for murder.
Autopsy exonerates Sirhan
The autopsy report proves that it was physically impossible for Sirhan to have fired the fatal shot to the back of Kennedy’s head, or any other shot that struck the Senator. The autopsy shows that Kennedy was shot from behind from below, while all witnesses say that Sirhan Sirhan shot at Robert Kennedy in a face to face position from 2-5 feet away with his arm outstretched horizontally toward the Senator. The trajectories of bullets that struck Kennedy were at sharp upward angles of 60° to 80° (nearly vertical), and the mortal wound fired into his brain was from just a couple inches behind him.
Bartcop.com describes the autopsy:
Los Angeles Coroner Thomas Noguchi conducted the official autopsy on the body of Robert Francis Kennedy on the morning of June 6. This very experienced coroner removed one intact bullet and fragments from another. The operation was witnessed by, according to writer Dan Moldea, “three forensic pathologists from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington and by two of Noguchi’s associates.”
In his resulting 62-page report, Noguchi stated that the shot that killed RFK “had entered through the mastoid bone, an inch behind the right ear and had traveled upward to sever the branches of the superior cerebral artery.” The largest fragment of that bullet lodged in the brain stem.
Another shot had penetrated Kennedy’s right armpit and exited through the upper portion of his chest at a 59-degree angle. The coroner determined that the senator’s arm must have been upraised when that bullet entered.
Yet another, a third shot, entered one-and-a-half inches below the previous one and stopped in the neck near the sixth cervical. This is the bullet that was found intact.
Checking Kennedy’s clothing for other telltale signs, Noguchi followed the path between two bullet holes in his suit coat and announced that a fourth bullet had been fired at the senator. It entered and exited the fabric without touching the senator.
Prosecutors withheld the autopsy report from Sirhan’s defense team until four months into the trial, and after Sirhan’s defense attorney Grant Cooper had needlessly admitted Sirhan’s guilt to the crime of murder during his opening argument. Although the LAPD’s DeWayne Wolfer made a detailed scheme of the path of Sirhan’s eight bullets, Thomas Noguchi responded that “there was really no way to accurately trace the flight path of so many bullets.” In his 1983 autobiography Coroner, Noguchi wrote, “Until more is precisely known … the existence of the second gunman remains a possibility. Thus, I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy.”
Security guard Gene Cesar
Thane Eugene Cesar, a recently-hired twenty-six year old part-time private security guard who worked full-time for Lockheed Aircraft, stood to Kennedy’s right as the group passed into the pantry. Cesar admitted to police that at the time of the assassination, he was standing behind and in actual contact with Senator Kennedy, and when the shooting began, he dropped down into a crouching position and pulled out his gun.
This account puts Cesar (and not Sirhan) in position to have shot Kennedy at close range with the upward angle by which the Senator was struck three times. After gunfire had ceased, Cesar advanced on Sirhan with his gun drawn, but Rosie Grier ordered him to put it away.
Cesar falsely told police that he had sold his .22 revolver before the crime, but a receipt proves that it was actually sold after the crime. The LAPD never test fired Cesar’s gun or asked to see it even once Cesar admitted having been in position to have fired the shots which struck RFK. The FBI was later told that the gun had been stolen from the home of the person who purchased it from Cesar.
Assassination researcher Ted Charach claims to have a film of a June 5, 1968, KNXT news (now KCBS) interview with shooting eyewitness Donald Schulman who tells Jerry Dunphy (R.I.P) that a security guard (probably Ace security guard Eugene Cesar) had fired his gun back at Sirhan and had accidentally shot Kennedy. Jerry Dunphy and KCBS have denied that this interview ever took place.
Photos of scene destroyed
The LAPD destroyed photographic evidence of the crime scene. One person who took photographs of the assassination scene, 15-year-old Jamie Scott Enyart, was tackled and arrested at gunpoint by the LAPD. His camera was seized and the film was never returned. In 1996, Enyart won a substantial amount of money in a civil suit against the LAPD in which he alleged the police department had willfully misfiled and then destroyed his photographs along with 2400 other assassination-related photos in an L.A. County Hospital incinerator in 1968.
Sirhan’s companions
Sirhan was seen with two other people before the assassination who later were heard shouting “We shot him!” Two witnesses, waiter Vincent Di Pierro and campaign worker Sandra Serrano, had seen Sirhan earlier in the evening hanging out with a guy and a girl. While taking in some fresh air on outdoor steps that lead up to the Embassy Ballroom, Sandra Serrano saw the group of three ascend the steps at about 11:30 p.m. Di Pierro says he noticed Sirhan standing by the tray table prior to the shooting because Sirhan was talking to an attractive girl in a polka dot dress. After the shooting, according to Serrano and another couple, the girl and guy (minus Sirhan) came back down the steps proclaiming “We shot Kennedy!”
Sgt. Paul Sharaga, the first police officer on the scene, soon filed a report saying witnesses had seen a young man and a woman in a purple and white polka dot dress running out of the hotel shouting “We shot him! We shot him!” He put out an All Points Bulletin on these two suspects, but LAPD higher-ups later cancelled this search. In fact, within minutes of the shooting, Sirhan Sirhan was the sole suspect.
During the police investigation, Special Unit Senator (SUS), the LAPD’s sole polygraph operator, Sgt. Enrique “Hank” Hernandez, did intensive interviews with Serrano trying to convince her that she did not hear anyone say “We shot him!” Transcripts show lie detector expert Hernandez badgering Serrano to renounce the testimony, saying she is “shaming Senator Kennedy” by keeping up with her story that the couple had said “We shot Kennedy!” But an agitated Serrano responds that “That’s what I heard!”
In the end, Manuel Pena, head of the SUS investigation insisted that witnesses misheard the couple, who had only said “They shot him!” The polka dot dress story was dismissed.
Other gunmen
Witnesses in the pantry saw other men with guns besides Sirhan Sirhan and Eugene Cesar. High school student Lisa Urso noticed a blond man in a gray suit putting a gun back in a holster, and a second witness saw a dark-haired man in a black suit (likely identified as Michael Wayne) fire two shots and then run out of the room.
Conclusion
Sirhan’s current attorney, Lawrence Teeter, is pushing for a California Supreme Court “evidentiary hearing” to show physical evidence which could exonerate Sirhan of the assassination.
Teeter’s main contention is that the L.A. County autopsy of Robert Kennedy, conducted by Thomas Noguchi, confirms that the Senator was shot three times from behind and mortally wounded by one bullet to the back of the head. This bullet entered Kennedy’s brain from right behind his right ear, and was fired from less than two inches from his head. The fact that the shot was point blank is proven by “powder burns” around the wound which only occur when a firearm is fewer than 3 inches from the target. Kennedy’s other wounds, to his shoulder and under his right armpit, were also angled from behind (a fourth shot from behind went through Kennedy’s suit without piercing skin).
Sirhan Sirhan was spotted firing an eight-round Ivar Johnson handgun at Sen. Kennedy from 2-5 feet in front of the presidential candidate, before being tackled by members of Kennedy’s entourage. Sirhan stood several feet in front of Kennedy, while all of Kennedy’s wounds were from a gun fired from behind him. So how could Sirhan have shot Kennedy even once?
Teeter also argues that physical evidence of the total number of bullets fired in the pantry proves that there was at least one other gunman in the pantry. At the end of the bloody melee, six people were shot (Kennedy was the only person who would die), and there were bullet holes in ceiling panels, doors, and doorjambs. Sirhan’s gun could hold eight bullets, but by counting the number of wounded and stray bullet holes around, there was evidence of at least ten bullets fired, and possibly more.
Teeter opposes demolition of the Ambassador Hotel because this represents destruction of vital evidence to his client. Although a lot of evidence was destroyed by the LAPD before and after Sirhan’s conviction, Teeter believes remaining evidence of bullet holes in the walls and ceilings of the pantry area could be analyzed for further proof that another gunman fired shots at the Senator, and in a real position to murder Kennedy.
The LAUSD’s Heritage K-12 plan calls for creation of a “five-member commission of presidential scholars to advise the school district on the appropriate treatment of the kitchen pantry” where Senator Robert F. Kennedy was murdered. LAUSD Superintendant Roy Romer has acknowledged that because the entire hotel building will be demolished, the pantry would have to be “containerized for possible re-creation and reinstallment in a new building.” Members of the Kennedy clan have publicly stated that they want the pantry/corridor to be demolished with the rest of the building and that preservation would be “ghoulish.”
Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Resources:
The Assassinations:
Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X
Edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease
Publisher: Feral House
Sirhan and the RFK Assassination by Lisa Pease
www.webcom.com/ctka/pr398-rfk.html
Bartcop Assassination Series: RFK
www.geocities.com/verisimus101/rfk
Official site of Lawrence Teeter,
attorney for Sirhan Sirhan
www.reopenRFKassassinationcase.com
