A Lie Too Big to Fail

by Lisa Pease

  Serrano asked, “Who did you shoot?”

  “Senator Kennedy!” the girl said as the two ran down the stairs and out into the darkness toward the back parking lot.

  Serrano didn’t believe it at first. She climbed down to the hotel’s ground-floor level and asked a guard at the Ambassador Room (below the Embassy Room) if Kennedy had been shot. “You’re drunk,” the guard said, blowing her off. She next asked a group of people down there if they’d heard if Kennedy had been shot. “You’re crazy,” they told her. Despite their responses, Serrano had the feeling something was terribly wrong.

  In the same southwest corner where the girl in the polka dot dress and the man in the gold shirt had just exited, the man who had been holding what appeared to be a radio or transistor to his cheek turned to Mary Whalen and Felicia Messuri, who had been sitting on a packing crate at the rear of the ballroom, and told the two women words to the effect, “You’ve seen me here all evening, haven’t you? You witnessed the fact that I was standing here when the Senator departed. Remember, you have seen me here. Don’t forget.” Then the man disappeared. Messuri felt he was “trying to establish he was in her view when Senator Kennedy was shot.”47

  During the shooting, while pinned at what was likely the southeast end of the pantry, Freed saw a curly dark-haired man run out the door to his left chased by a person who was yelling, “Stop him! Get him!”

  William Singer saw a man pushing his way through the crowd, carrying a rolled-up poster over a yard long, about 4" to 6" in diameter, with something black inside. Several people were now saying, “Stop that man!”

  Joseph Klein and Patti Nelson were just outside the Embassy Room in the main lobby when they saw a man running out of the pantry carrying a package. Patti thought she saw a gun inside what appeared initially to her to be a blue canvas type of cloth that “could well have been a gun case.” She described seeing “about six inches” of “a wooden stock of a rifle or a shotgun” protruding from the blue canvas. She was “quite sure that the wood that protruded from this blue canvas was definitely the stock of a gun.”

  Klein also thought he saw an object wrapped in some sort of blue material. The object appeared to be larger at one end than at the other. Klein tried to chase the man but he disappeared out the door. “My God, he had a gun and we let him get by,” Klein said.

  Steve Fontanini, a photographer for the Los Angeles Times, saw a man running through the lobby and, thinking he might have been the shooter, gave chase. Gregory Ross Clayton, a Rafferty campaign worker, was in the lobby on his way to the Embassy Room when he heard what sounded like firecrackers. Suddenly, he saw a man running out and heard someone yelling “Stop that man,” so he chased and tackled him. Clayton recognized the running man as one of four men he had seen in a group with a woman in a polka dot dress earlier that night by the lobby fountain.

  Ace security guard Augustus Mallard ran over and helped Clayton subdue the man. Mallard handcuffed him, a moment photographer Fontanini captured on camera. Mallard turned the man over to the police, who quickly learned his name was Michael Wayne.

  Inside the pantry, the struggle continued. By the third shot, Uecker grabbed the small gunman and threw his right arm around the young man’s neck. Uecker grabbed the gun hand in his left and tried to point it away from the crowd. Another maître d’, Edward Minasian, grabbed the shooter around the waist. Uecker swung the man around and pushed him down onto the steam table.

  Rosey Grier joined the struggle, trying to wrestle the gun from the shooter’s hand. Rafer jumped in as well, as did several others, including Barry and Burns.

  Robert Healy, a reporter for the Boston Globe, saw four or five flashes and heard the same number of shots. He jumped up on the steam tables and ran to the end, where he saw a struggle going on at his feet. It struck him as unusual that a man as large as Rosey Grier was having so much trouble getting the gun from such a small man.

  Barry got the gun out of the shooter’s hand and put it on the steam table, but the gunman grabbed it right back. Someone pounded the gunman’s hand on the table, and the gun fell out. Reporter Boris Yaro reached out and grabbed it, but another man ripped it from Yaro. Amazingly, that gun—or some gun—found its way back into the suspect’s hand, despite the fact that several large men were then holding him.

  Andrew West, the news director for radio station KRKD, had entered the pantry just as shots were being fired. He instinctively turned on his tape recorder and captured the scene vividly. West would later tell the FBI he couldn’t identify the shooter because his attention had been focused entirely on the gun, as his broadcast made clear:

  Senator Kennedy has been shot … Oh my God … I am right here and Rafer Johnson has hold of the man who apparently has fired the shot. … He still has the gun—the gun is pointed at me right at this moment. … Get the gun … Get the gun … Get his thumb … Get his thumb … Get a hold of his thumb and break it! … That’s it, Rafer, get it. … OK now hold on to the gun.48

  Grier finally wrested the gun from the shooter. Joseph LaHive tried to take it from him, but Grier held on until Rafer Johnson came up, at which point Grier and LaHive released the gun to Rafer. Rafer wisely refused to give the gun to anyone on the scene. He wanted to take it to the police himself.

  Bystanders were pummeling the shooter. Speaker Unruh moved quickly to ensure no one killed the suspect before they figured out what had happened.

  “We want him alive,” La Hive and Grier yelled. People were vividly aware of how Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas just four and a half years earlier.

  “We don’t want another Oswald!” Unruh yelled.

  “We don’t want another Oswald!” West echoed.

  On the stage of the Embassy Room, a man pushed his way to the microphone asking, “Is there a doctor in the house?” Men and women screamed and shouted, as Steve Smith asked people from the podium to “Please clear the room” so that medical people could get to the Senator and the other victims.

  Dr. Stanley Abo, whose wife was a campaign worker for Kennedy, had already made his way into the pantry. He stopped at Paul Schrade, whom he mistakenly thought was Steve Smith, then moved on to Kennedy and knelt down beside him. Kennedy had a problem with one eye, but otherwise seemed “quite lucid,” but his breathing was shallow and his pulse was slow. Kennedy looked around for his wife and called her name several times.

  Dr. Abo felt for the wound and soon found a hole in the head just behind the right ear. He worried the slow pulse might be due to intracranial pressure, so he pressed his finger on the wound to stimulate the bleeding to relieve cranial pressure and to prevent blood from clotting there.

  Kennedy grimaced in pain. Ethel found her way to his side, bringing a bag of ice, which Abo took and applied to Kennedy’s head. “Oh, Ethel,” Abo heard Kennedy say.

  Elsewhere in the hotel, Lillian Butler, a hotel phone operator, called the police department. “This is the Ambassador Hotel. Do you hear me?” Butler queried.

  “Yeah,” Wayne G. Hathaway, a Communications Division officer, replied from Parker Center. “I hear you.”

  “They have an emergency … they want the police to the kitchen right away.”

  “What kind of an emergency?”

  “… I don’t know, honey,” Butler replied. “It’s some kind of an emergency. I don’t know what happened. You know we have a Kennedy here tonight.”

  “Big deal!” Officer Hathaway said with obvious disdain.

  “Do you want me to find out what it is?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Hold on.” Ruby Ford then came on the line.

  “Uh, my banquet maître d’ reported that Senator Kennedy has been shot.”

  “He’s been shot?” Hathaway asked in a very different—almost plaintive—tone. “What’s the address there, please?”49

  LAPD Sergeant Paul Sharaga was literally driving past the back of the hotel when, at 12:23 A.M., he heard a call about an “ambulance shooting” at the Ambassad
or. Sharaga turned quickly into the back parking lot and began setting up a command post.

  During Kennedy’s speech, Don Weston, a driver for the Kennedy party that night, had left the hotel to line the cars up to take the Kennedy party to a popular club downtown. He had tried to listen to Kennedy’s speech on the radio, but there was a problem with his antenna. He got out of the car to fix it, leaving the door open so he could hear the radio. Suddenly he heard someone asking for a doctor. He realized he needed to make room for an ambulance and backed up his car just as the first policemen arrived.

  Weston heard a group of people at the back of the hotel talking to the police about a man whom they saw running out the back parking lot. Some people in the crowd pointed in the direction the man had gone, and two policemen took off after him.50

  Sergeant Sharaga apparently received this information, because he immediately broadcast a description of a suspect just before 12:29 A.M.: “Description suspect of shooting at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard, male Caucasian, 20 to 22, 6’2”, very thin build, blond curly hair, wearing brown pants and shirt. It’s a light tan shirt. Direction taken unknown.” A response came back that the suspect was in custody, but when Sharaga asked for confirmation, he was told, “Unable to determine whether actual suspect is in custody or person in custody is the suspect.”51

  Jim Busch, a Students for Kennedy volunteer, had pulled into the parking lot on the southern side of the hotel with his sister Andrea and their friend Richard Rittner just as Kennedy’s speech, which they had been listening to on the radio, was ending. They were still listening when they heard a commotion, followed by Smith’s call for a doctor. Suddenly, the three noticed a male and female hurrying past their car. Jim threw his arm out to stop the man. The woman, wearing a long dark coat, hurried past and stopped a few feet away. Jim asked the man what had happened, and the man said he’d just shaken the Senator’s hand when a man stepped forward, pulled a gun from his trousers, and fired at Kennedy.

  Just then, they saw five patrol cars pull up. Andrea felt there was something strange about these two, so the trio told Officers J.J. Fedrizzi and L.E. De Losh enough to lead them to believe that the male and female were possibly fleeing the scene. Rittner described the male as “Mexican,” about 5’9” and stocky, and the girl as having dark brown or black medium-length hair.52

  De Losh immediately asked the Communications Division to seal off the area and broadcast the following “suspect” descriptions: “No. 1, male Latin, 30 to 35, 5’9½”, stocky, wearing a wool hunter’s hat with a small brim. No. 2, described as a female Caucasian. No further description.”53

  LAPD Chief of Detectives Robert A. Houghton was on vacation in Yosemite. He had left instructions for how he could be reached in an emergency, but no one apparently followed those instructions. In his absence, Inspector John Powers, the acting commander of the LAPD detectives, took control of the crime scene and gave primary authority to the nearby Rampart Station.

  Several officers responded to the Ambassador call immediately, including Officers Travis White and the young police academy graduate he was training, Arthur Placencia. When they entered the pantry, they found Rosey Grier lying on the suspect to hold him down. Frank Burns had the suspect’s legs and Uecker had the small man in a headlock. Unruh was keeping people off the suspect so no one could kill him before he stood trial. Officer White asked who had the gun. Somebody indicated Rafer had it, so White asked for the gun, but Johnson refused to turn it over at that point, possibly because he wasn’t sure these were actual policemen. Rosey Grier didn’t want to release the suspect to the police,54 but White and Placencia were finally able to pry the suspect free.

  One officer present as White and Placencia took the suspect away, Randolph Adair, told Dan Moldea years later, “The guy was real confused. It was like it didn’t exactly hit him what he had done. He had a blank, glassed-over look on his face—like he wasn’t in complete control of his mind at the time.”55

  As the officers put the suspect in the car, Jesse Unruh jumped, uninvited, into the back seat with him. The police car sped three miles in three minutes to transport the suspect from the Ambassador Hotel to the Rampart Station. The suspect was “very cool,” and said nothing but “yes” to questions Officer Placencia put to him about understanding his rights, wishing to remain silent, and wishing to have an attorney present. The only time he said anything else was when Unruh asked the suspect the question everyone wanted answered: “Why did you shoot him?” The LAPD recorded the response as: “You think I’m crazy so you can use it as evidence against me?”56

  In the car, the rookie Placencia flashed lights in the suspect’s eyes. Placencia thought the suspect’s pupils looked dilated and wondered if he was under the influence of alcohol or a drug. Placencia’s partner, the more experienced White, redid this check when they arrived at the station a few minutes later, because Placencia had only looked at the suspect’s eyes to make his assessment. White checked the suspect’s eyes, then Placencia’s, for comparison. White reported that the suspect’s eyes behaved normally, that the man did not appear to be intoxicated.

  When they reached Rampart, although the officers placed the suspect in the Breathalyzer room, the suspect was not given a Breathalyzer test. White left to inform the watch commander of their arrival. Unruh waited with the suspect until he was transferred to Interrogation Room B.

  At 12:30 A.M., Kennedy was rushed by ambulance to Central Receiving Hospital, a police hospital which serviced criminals and victims of crime (and later became the site of a new Rampart police station), where Dr. Faustin Bazilauskas and Dr. Albert Holt examined him. Dr. Holt found two bullet wounds and recommended brain surgery and suggested getting Dr. Henry Cuneo.

  Minutes later, the police radio chatter indicated confusion. One officer asked if there was a command post set up and if the suspect was in custody. Another officer responded, “He left there approximately five minutes ago. He was taken into … custody in the police car, and there was another suspect being held within the building, and I sent Nunley into—”

  “One suspect in custody. One suspect in the building. Is there a supervisor at the station?” asked the first officer.

  At the command post, Sharaga continued to communicate with Control. “Until I establish or at least have been informed at the C.P. [Command Post] that the suspect is in custody,” Sharaga broadcast, “request you repeat the broadcast of suspect description I gave earlier this evening. Repeat at least every ten minutes on all frequencies.”

  Another officer responded. “The description we have is a male Latin, 25–26, 5'5", bushy hair, dark eyes, light build, wearing a blue jacket and blue Levis and blue tennis shoes. Do you have anything to add?”

  “That’s not the description I put out,” Sharaga objected. “The description I put out was a male Caucasian—20 to 22, approximately 6' to 6'2", sandy blond curly hair, and wearing brown pants and a light tan shirt.”

  Several times throughout the first 90 minutes after the shooting, Control noted to Sharaga that his radio was “breaking up.”

  Ethel, Pierre Salinger, astronaut John Glenn and several of Kennedy’s friends and aides gathered at Central Receiving Hospital, where Kennedy had been brought by the police. Kennedy was given oxygen and fed intravenously. But it was clear Kennedy would need brain surgery, which Good Samaritan Hospital was better equipped to handle, so Kennedy was transferred. There, Kennedy was given a tracheotomy to help his breathing. Two minutes later, Kennedy stopped breathing and was immediately put on a respirator.

  The police prevented unauthorized personnel from entering the sealed fifth floor containing the Intensive Care Ward where Robert Kennedy was being examined. Several times, the police had to turn back people clad in hospital-type clothing. Not even other doctors were allowed in the ward without permission.57 Their barricade was so effective they nearly prevented Dr. Henry Cuneo, one of Los Angeles’ best brain surgeons, from reaching the Senator.58

  Outside Good Samaritan, a somber
crowd gathered. People lit candles, cried, prayed, and held their breath as they waited for word from the men battling to save his life.

  Some 270 miles away, secluded in his private penthouse suite at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes tuned in to watch the only TV station still broadcasting in his area at that hour, the CBS affiliate that he owned. He had watched Kennedy’s victory speech and was still watching when the report came in that Robert Kennedy had been shot. He would watch the continuing coverage nearly nonstop for the next 26 hours.

  1 Jack Newfield, RFK: A Memoir (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003), p. 8.

  2 A civil trial in 1999 found that James Earl Ray, convicted for assassinating King, did not, in fact, kill Martin Luther King, and that government and “persons unknown” played a role in King’s death. Jim Douglass attended every day of this trial and wrote an account that is included in The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003).

  3 Newfield, p. 249.

  4 Newfield, pp. 250–251.

  5 Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy (New York: Touchstone, 2000), p. 379.

  6 Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978), p. 360.

  7 Richard Goodwin, Remembering America : A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1988), p. 479.

  8 This portion of Fahey’s story comes primarily from Fahey’s interview conducted 6/12/68 by journalist Fernando Faura, a 24-page document found in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Unit Senator (SUS) files. Specific quotes are from the Faura interview unless otherwise noted. Robert Blair Kaiser called this man “Robert Duane” in his own book to protect his identity. A few other authors on the case borrowed Kaiser’s pseudonym of Robert Duane for Fahey as well.

  Some have unfairly discounted Fahey as crazy because he referred to his talks with Eugene McCarthy, a reference, they thought, to Senator Eugene McCarthy. It’s clear, however, from the tapes, transcripts, and FBI files that Fahey was referring to the FBI Special Agent who interviewed him, whose name was Eugene B. McCarthy.