A Lie Too Big to Fail

by Lisa Pease

  “It kind of had—I don’t know what they call it—but it’s like—looked like a bib in the front, kind of went around.”

  “A lace dickey, probably,” a Grand Juror offered.

  “It was the same as the clothing,” DiPierro clarified. “And then she was—she—the person who is accused of shooting him was—like I say, they were both on the—standing together.”

  “Back of the tray stand?” Howard asked.

  “Yes … he looked as though he either talked to her or flirted with her because she smiled. This is just before he got down. … Together, they were both smiling. As he got down, he was smiling. … In fact, the minute the first two shots were fired, he still had a very sick-looking smile on his face. That’s the one thing—I can never forget that.”

  One of the jurors asked DiPierro to describe the facial characteristics of the girl. “She had dark hair that was cut … just above the shoulders. … And it just kind of looked like it was messed up … She could have changed that—she could have come with curls. I don’t know, it was just messed up at the time.

  “Her face—facial expression, she had what looked like a short nose. She wasn’t too—facially, she wasn’t too pretty; she was not that pretty. …

  “And like I say, figure—she had a very good figure.”

  Howard asked DiPierro to describe the dress. “It was a white dress and it had either black or dark purple polka dots on it. It kind of had—I don’t know what they call it—but it’s like—looked like a bib in the front, kind of went around. It’s like that,” he said, indicating with his hands.

  Howard asked DiPierro how all the non-kitchen staff got into the kitchen, given that there were guards at both ends of the pantry. DiPierro himself had been challenged by a guard, but a fellow worker had said to the guard “He is with the hotel.” DiPierro had no answer, but stated most of the people in the pantry seemed to be press people.

  Ira Goldstein took the stand next. A young reporter for Continental News, Goldstein had initially entered the pantry because someone said there were sandwiches there. He did not notice Sirhan there. While inside, the Senator entered just as Ira was walking west. The woman he was with, Robin Casden, shook Kennedy’s hand, and then Ira and his companion continued on. He heard shots just seconds after he passed Kennedy. He thought it was balloons popping, but by the second or third sound he realized someone was shooting at Kennedy. He didn’t turn back to look. He stepped over Irwin Stroll, who was wounded already, and felt a bullet graze him. Then a second bullet hit him in his left thigh. Like DiPierro, he heard about five shots, but said there could have been more. Goldstein staggered to the wall and fell against DiPierro.

  Goldstein added, unprompted: “By the way, the shots had the same tone to them. I don’t think they were from two guns, two different guns. … They sounded the same.”

  Officer Arthur Placencia testified next. He didn’t even know whom the suspect had shot when he apprehended him. He described how in the car, the young man refused to give his name. Officer Placencia read him his rights and asked if the suspect understood them. The suspect was silent, so Placencia read them again. This time, the suspect mumbled something. Placencia read him his rights a third time and asked him “Do you understand your rights?” The suspect said yes, and indicated he wished to remain silent. Officer Placencia then asked, “Do you wish an attorney present?” When the suspect indicated that he did, Placencia asked him no more questions.

  Next up was Karl Uecker. Howard asked Uecker, who had a noticeable German accent, to slow down a bit when he spoke so the transcriptionist and jury could process what he was saying. Fukuto showed Uecker the drawing of the pantry, and Uecker described taking Kennedy’s hand to lead him into the pantry. Kennedy had turned almost immediately after entering to shake someone’s hand, causing Uecker to lose his grip. Uecker retrieved Kennedy’s hand and led him a few steps further, to the west end of the steam tables, when Kennedy again turned, breaking free to shake a dishwasher’s hand. Uecker grabbed him one last time and turned to walk eastward. Then, said Uecker, “something rushed on my right side. I—at that time I didn’t recognize what it was, paper or white pieces of things.”

  Uecker heard the first and second shots, felt Kennedy fall from his hand, and noticed a shooter to his right. He threw his right arm around the shooter’s neck and pressed him up against the steam table.

  “While I was holding the hand where he had the gun in, I was trying to get the point of the gun as far as I could away from the part where Mr. Kennedy was laying. … I was trying to push the gun away … where I didn’t see too many people, while he was still shooting.”

  Fukuto asked Uecker how many shots he had heard.

  “I couldn’t heard [sic] too clearly, but I thought it was five or six, but I was hitting his hand on the steam heater as hard as I could, with my left hand, I had him right here on the wrist, and hitting my left hand on the heater to get rid of the gun.”

  “He has his gun in his right hand?” Fukuto asked.

  “In his right hand, yes.”

  “And you grabbed him with your left hand?”

  “The left hand, yes, and had the right arm around his neck. I was standing there and he was shooting and I could feel when he was turning his hand towards the crowd, that’s why I pushed all over the steam table as far as I could, to almost to the end of the steam table.”

  Uecker had pushed the suspect down backwards onto the steam table.

  “And then I saw some hands coming over, reaching for the gun. I don’t know who it was.” Uecker hollered at his partner Eddie Minasian to “Get the police.”

  Asked again how many shots he thought he had heard, Uecker said “there was six shots—six—could be seven.”

  Fukuto asked how many times the gun went off before Uecker grabbed the suspect.

  “Twice” was Uecker’s unequivocal reply.

  “Twice that you know?”

  “I must have grabbed the arm by the third shot.”

  Fukuto showed him the gun and asked how it compared with the one he had seen in the pantry.

  “I don’t know too much about guns, but I think it was about this size. … The gun was not bigger than this one.”

  “I understand, you can’t say it’s the same gun?” Fukuto probed.

  “I couldn’t tell you it was the same gun because I was too busy to keep him in my headlock.”

  Amazingly, at Sirhan’s trial, Uecker was the one asked to verify that Sirhan’s gun was the one used in the pantry. Amazingly, no one on Sirhan’s defense team quoted this back to Uecker on the stand in rebuttal of that identification.

  Fukuto was ready to dismiss Uecker, but the foreman indicated one of the jurors, Mrs. Meyers, had a question, which was read by Mr. Fukuto:

  “How far was the suspect from Senator Kennedy and yourself at the time that the first shot took place?”

  “How far?” Uecker said, thinking. “As far as my left hand can reach because I remember I was trying to pull him [Kennedy], and the man who shot [Sirhan], I could feel him [Sirhan] coming around me … I could feel that the gun was about this far,” Uecker said, indicating a distance, “when he shot, right from me, from my right.”

  “Your body was in between this person’s body and—”

  “—and Senator Kennedy.”

  “And his arm reached over your body when he fired—”

  “Around me, around me, not over me.”

  Edward Minasian testified next. He told nearly the same story as Uecker, but from a slightly different angle. After Kennedy stopped to shake hands, both Minasian and Uecker turned back also and took a step toward Kennedy. As Minasian turned his head to the left to look back toward the west, he described how through his “peripheral vision” he “noticed someone dart out from this area, dart out and lean against the steam table.”

  “And I saw a hand extended with a revolver, and I saw the explosion of the cartridges out of the … revolver.”

  Howard asked to wh
at portion of the Senator’s body the gun was pointed.

  “I would say the revolver was at the suspect’s shoulder height.”

  “Could you tell how close to the Senator the barrel of that gun would be?”

  “Approximately three feet.”

  “Was there one shot at this time or more than one shot?”

  “I heard two shots. … They were very, very deliberate shots. There was just a slight pause. It was a bang-bang cadence, and after the second shot, why, as I said, I saw the flash of the cartridges being discharged, and immediately there were several other people in that area behind the Senator, and I just pushed into Karl Uecker.”

  “It seemed to be that the gentleman standing behind the Senator [Paul Schrade] fell first,” Minasian added. “And the Senator was kind of staggering a little bit, and then seemed to be that that was the order that they fell.” (Other witnesses would later say Kennedy fell first, then Paul. Clearly, they fell nearly simultaneously.)

  Howard asked how many shots he heard in total.

  “I thought he emptied the revolver, and there were quite a few—I know the first two were deliberate, and the others came in quick spurts so—”

  “[I]f there were two—was that before anyone touched the suspect or the person shooting?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “After that, people started grabbing?”

  “Right.”

  “And there were then shots fired after that, is that correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Were those shots fired in the general direction of the Senator?”

  “I doubt it because the Senator at that time was—well, the suspect was shooting from this … end of the table. And I don’t see how he could have been shooting at—and we had him and his arm somewhere on this steam table here. And I doubt if it was in the same direction as the first two shots.”

  At this point, the Grand Jury broke for lunch.

  The Grand Jury reconvened at 2 P.M., and Howard questioned Harold Burba. Burba was a fireman with the Los Angeles Fire Department assigned to the Photo Bureau, where he occasionally took photos “when requested by other agencies, such as the Fire Prevention Bureau.” (In a statement to the FBI later that day, Burba stated he had gone to the Ambassador Hotel at the request of the Fire Prevention Bureau “to take pictures of any violations of fire regulations.”)

  Burba told the Jury that he was in the pantry about 30 minutes before Kennedy came through. Howard asked Burba “What is the first thing that you noticed or heard that was unusual?”

  “I think the first thing that attracted my attention was the gunshots sounded like a cap pistol to me.”

  “What did you do when you heard those shots?”

  “Well, I was looking in that direction and saw the flashes, and I jumped up and started over in that direction. And there was such a big crowd around, that I—my second thought was, ‘my job is to take pictures,’ so I went back and got my camera and started taking pictures.”

  Howard showed Burba Grand Jury exhibits 3-A and 3-B, large photos of Sirhan as he was being apprehended. Burba said he had witnessed the man depicted in those photos walk in with Kennedy’s party the first time he entered the pantry, en route to the stage to speak. Burba said this man noticed his attention because “he appeared to be looking all around him instead of looking ahead, as all other members were.” The prosecution had called Burba because his account suggested premeditation—a key component the County would have to prove to convict Sirhan.

  Burba noticed the man who was “looking all around him” was holding a rolled-up poster—“I thought maybe it was a Kennedy poster, or something. And he was holding it in both hands.” Burba described the roll as two feet long and “possibly three—three—three to four or five inches in diameter.” He saw the man hold this object up, twice, at two different times. “The only reason it caught my eye was because it was the same object. I wondered about it as he passed by, what it was. … I saw the poster, as if he was holding it up, to get it out of the way, or something. At least, I saw the poster up in the air.”

  Neither Burba, nor the grand jurors, nor the prosecution had any way of knowing that Burba was actually describing Michael Wayne, not Sirhan. Burba himself didn’t learn that until a month later, when the LAPD showed him a photo of Wayne, at which point Burba stated it was Wayne, not Sirhan, that he saw walking with the rolled-up poster looking around suspiciously. Instead of proving premeditation, Burba’s testimony proved only that sworn testimony is not necessarily accurate, however honestly given. Burba swore to what he thought was true. But it wasn’t the truth at all. This would not be the last time an untruth entered the court record as an uncontested “fact” that wasn’t.

  Henry Carreon spoke next. He was a playground director for an elementary school but was also studying police science at East Los Angeles College. He had gone to a shooting range in Fish Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains, several miles east of the Pasadena area, with another man, David Montellano, on June 4, the day of the presidential primary. They were there from about noon to 2 P.M.

  Under Howard’s questioning, Carreon described seeing a shooter, “about five feet away,” who was shooting very rapidly with a revolver. On the range, Carreon explained, “you are supposed to shoot and pause. … Usually, the range officer goes up to an individual shooting in this manner and he will inform them that it’s not supposed to be done on the range. So this attracted our attention.”

  Carreon was asked if the man shown in the same photos that had just been shown to Burba was the same man he had seen on the range. Carreon said it was.

  Carreon related how David went over and asked the man shooting what type of revolver he was using. The man said it was a .22 caliber gun. But when Carreon asked him the same question, he got an odd response: “At first, he paused. He didn’t say anything, like as if I wasn’t—didn’t even exist. And then I asked him again. … And he said, ‘An Iver Johnson.’” The man then turned the pistol around and showed it to him.

  Howard asked if he had noticed how many shells the man had fired and what type of ammunition he had used. “I’d say three to four hundred empty casings,” Carreon replied. (No one ever reported Sirhan buying that much ammunition, ever.) Carreon also quoted David as having asked, “Isn’t that a special type of bullet?” because the man “had just one box aside from all these other—that it’s called the mini-magnum; and this type of bullet, when it penetrates on an object, usually tears and splits out into different directions where the regular bullet of a .22 caliber goes in a hole, and when it goes into an object, it will come out the same size.” While Mini-Mag bullets can shatter on impact, they don’t always. In this case, it’s interesting that of all the bullets fired in the pantry, that the only one that shattered was the one that entered Robert Kennedy’s brain.

  Howard handed Carreon the gun Rafer Johnson had turned in. “This is it,” Carreon said. Howard asked was there any other conversation.

  “I think the individual asked David, ‘How do you hold your gun to get better accuracy because this gun doesn’t have a sight on it?’ … It didn’t have a sight where David’s did.”

  Two jurors had questions. Was anyone allowed to shoot on that particular range? Yes. Was a fee required? No. Was it crowded that day? No. Was there a range master that day? Yes. But the range master, Everett Buckner, who would have a very interesting story to tell about what he had seen on the range that day, had not yet been interviewed.

  Dr. V. Faustin Bazilauskas described the wounds of the other people shot that night. The first victim he saw was a young man (Irwin Stroll) with a shin injury. (He did not appear to know that a bullet was recovered from Stroll’s leg, and the Grand Jury did not learn of this.) Elizabeth Evans had a bullet lodged in her forehead that had penetrated about an inch and a half into her scalp, but she was lucid and hadn’t required immediate treatment. A bullet had penetrated William Weisel’s left abdomen but Dr. Bazilauskas didn’t know how deeply. All of
these victims were sent out to neighboring hospitals for treatment. He remembered a “young fellow” named “Goldstein” who had a bullet lodged in his “upper thigh, near the hip.”

  Dr. Bazilauskas’ initial notes on Paul Schrade said the wound was “superficial,” but it was already bandaged, and he did not probe the wound. He simply determined Schrade’s condition was neurologically sound, and he sent him to another hospital for treatment. Schrade had said, according to Dr. Bazilauskas, “I’m not bad, Doctor. Work on the others.” According to the doctor’s notes, the wound was “in the vertex,” i.e., the top portion of the skull. (A bullet was subsequently removed from the top of Schrade’s head and not at “the center of his forehead,” as Officer DeWayne Wolfer’s 7/8/68 report would wrongly attest,157 but Dr. Bazilauskas appeared to have no knowledge of this either when he testified.)

  Charles Hughes testified that a “Chrysler products” key was found on the suspect and given to Hughes by Officer White. Hughes noted that Officer White had put his initials on the evidence, and Hughes read the serial number into the record. He had given the key to Lieutenant Albin Hegge at about 4:30 P.M. on June 5. Oddly, this evidence did not come to the court in an evidence envelope. It came in Hughes’ pocket.

  Hegge testified that he had received the key from Officer White initially, but had returned it to White, who then gave it to Hughes, who gave it back to Hegge. Howard asked if he had obtained a search warrant to search the car which this key fit. He had.

  “What type of automobile did you search?”

  “I searched a ’56 Chrysler Sedan,” Hegge said.

  But that wasn’t Sirhan’s car. The Chrysler, a ’58 model, had been Robert Gindroz’s car. Sirhan drove a ’56 De Soto. As we saw earlier, the key to Sirhan’s car also opened the door to Gindroz’s car. The jury was not informed of this.158 Hegge moved seamlessly to describing what was in Sirhan’s car, and how he had found a wallet inside “the glove compartment of the ’56 De Soto which I searched.”