by Lisa Pease
Houghton also contacted Warren Christopher, who, years later, would serve as President Carter’s Deputy Secretary of State and head the “Christopher Commission,” which looked into police brutality in the LAPD in the wake of the Rodney King beating. Houghton wanted Christopher, who was then Deputy Attorney General of the United States, to find out whether the process of getting information from the FBI to the LAPD could be sped up. The current process required that FBI reports from the Los Angeles field office be forwarded to the office of the U.S. Attorney General in D.C., and then returned to the FBI’s Los Angeles field office and the local U.S. Attorney General’s office before being turned over to the LAPD.198
Houghton also contacted Christopher to “solicit his office’s assistance in establishing local liaison with CIA.”199 Why the LAPD was seeking local liaison with the CIA at this early stage, and why Houghton went to Christopher, as opposed to an official CIA representative, is not stated. Months later, Houghton suggested to Captain Brown “that he have Goliath work on Sirhan background re traumatic injures [sic].” “Goliath” was a codeword used by law enforcement agencies to refer to the CIA.200 The LAPD would later openly acknowledge getting CIA help on Sirhan’s childhood in the Middle East during the traumatic period that ended with the formation of Israel in the land formerly known as Palestine. They did not, however, mention additional assistance the CIA provided the LAPD in other areas of their investigation, which will be discussed in a later chapter.
By June 12, SUS was in motion, staffed largely by officers with previous backgrounds in military and intelligence work.201 Pena moved quickly to take control of the FBI’s relationship with the LAPD. He wanted access to anything and everything they were discovering relating to either Sirhan or “anything suggesting or eliminating possible political conspiracy and anything of a local nature supporting or eliminating any intra United States or local conspiracy.” The FBI reported that Pena had communicated that “it is necessary for him to know whether this information is forthcoming from the FBI or whether the LAPD will have to make its own arrangements to obtain same.” The FBI’s record of this request notes that “Lt. Pena further advised that there would be no distribution of LAPD material until he personally had a chance to review this material.”202
A flow chart showed how information was routed through Special Unit Senator. Information was gathered by various officers on the investigative team, but all information came to Pena for his personal review. He was the only one who got to see all the pieces. On Pena’s sole authority, avenues of investigation could be pursued or shut down. If anyone wanted to control the investigation of the Robert Kennedy assassination, one needed simply to control Lieutenant Manny Pena.
Similarly, Pena’s close associate Hernandez, who was promoted to Lieutenant during this investigation, was the sole arbiter of witness veracity. He alone could decide who was telling the truth and who was not, based on his polygraph sessions. These “lie detectors,” however, are provably misnamed. Innocent people can fail to pass a polygraph test. And pathological liars, those with special training, and a small percent of the general population can “beat” the machine, i.e., tell a lie without indicating abnormal stress on the machine. Lastly, the integrity of the operator is key to a successful session. A faulty or dishonest operator can cause the person being tested such stress that a truth-teller can be made to look like a liar. Similarly, a dishonest operator can lessen the sensitivity of a machine such that a liar can look like a truth-teller. There are other concerns as well. Poor wording of questions and too many questions can adversely affect the usefulness of the test. For all these reasons and more, most states do not allow use of polygraph evidence in court. The primary use of such a machine is simply to scare criminals into a confession.
Given that Hernandez was the sole person responsible for polygraphs in this case, it’s worth evaluating his credibility before continuing. If Hernandez is credible, we should give his assertions some weight. But if he himself has veracity issues, then we should not trust his pronouncements on the veracity of others.
We don’t have a California Court of Appeals record on Hernandez to quote. Instead, we have the tapes of his lie detector sessions. None are more incriminating to Hernandez’s credibility than his session with Sandra Serrano, although what he did with Serrano he did to others with evidence of conspiracy as well. His treatment of Serrano was a sort of template that he repeated with others as needed. Allow me to set the stage.
When Pena and Hernandez joined the investigation, like Wolfer, their first area of focus was discrediting Serrano’s account of the girl in the polka dot dress running from the hotel saying “We shot him.” According to Houghton, “Pena knew that as long as Miss Serrano stuck to her story, no amount of independent evidence would, in itself, serve to dispel the ‘polka-dot-dress girl fever’ which had by now, in the press and public mind, reached a high point on the thermometer of intrigue. She alone could put the spotted ghost to rest.”203
Pena suggested Hernandez take Serrano out for an “SUS-bought steak.” Houghton describes the evening as follows:
Hernandez called for Miss Serrano, and over dinner they talked about what she had seen and heard after the assassination at the hotel. She still insisted her original story was true. Hernandez asked if she would be willing to undergo a polygraph examination. She readily agreed, and after dinner they drove to Parker Center….”
From Houghton’s description, this all sounds very friendly. But the facts paint a different picture. Serrano only agreed to the meal on the condition that her aunt Cecilia Magdaleno (“Maggie,” to Serrano), whom she lived with, be in attendance. After a heavy steak meal, and two drinks, which Hernandez—an officer of the law—bought for the underage Serrano, at roughly 8 P.M., Hernandez brought Maggie and Serrano into a room and strapped Serrano into his polygraph machine.
With Serrano’s aunt Maggie in the room, the session started innocently enough. Serrano asked why she should have to take a polygraph when it’s not allowed to be used in a court of law. Hernandez told her she had been misinformed, which was partly true. A few states unfortunately do permit the use of polygraph evidence, although most do not, for the reasons noted above.
Hernandez tried to get Serrano to close her eyes, but she refused. He gave her an introduction to how the polygraph worked. He asked her to answer every question he was about to ask with “no.” He would list street addresses and ask if they matched her parents’ address. He instructed her to answer no to all of the questions, i.e., to deliberately lie when he came to the right address. Then he would show her he was able to determine when she lied. When he got to the correct address and Serrano said “no,” Hernandez said “Okay, that’s the first untruthful answer you’ve told me.” This might seem impressive, but this information was likely already available to him. Then he turned to her aunt and explained he needed to talk to Serrano “by herself if that’s all right with you. You can wait at the door.” Serrano didn’t want her aunt to leave, but Serrano reluctantly agreed to continue the session, given that she was already strapped into the chair.
The transcript of this session, excerpted below, doesn’t capture the full impact of the audible record. Interested parties should obtain a copy of the full session on tape from the California State Archives. As disturbing as this is to read, it’s worse to hear. It’s so distressing that one of Serrano’s cards in the LAPD’s master cardfile index of the investigation says, “Do not play or have transcribed without permission of Capt. Brown.” What you are about to read was an interview that, for reasons that will become obvious, was never intended to be made public.
With Serrano strapped in a chair, alone and without support, Hernandez began his interrogation of Serrano. The session would last roughly two and a half hours.
Hernandez began by playing “good cop.” He told her she looked better in person than in a picture he had of her on the back steps. He said he had interviewed “19 other girls that have made statements regarding what
they observed on that night,” implying that 19 other girls had opened up to him. He told Serrano he liked her and that she was a “very intelligent girl” and that he thought she was “going to go somewhere” in her life.
He then mentioned not wanting this to turn out like Dallas and the Warren Report, which—even by 1968—was considered a flawed investigation that left many questions unresolved.
Before he got very far, Serrano interrupted to ask who would learn of the results of this session. “I don’t want any of this stuff just made public,” she said.
Hernandez sidestepped her question, saying “No, I give you my” but before he said “word,” he changed his statement. “We’re not dealing for publicity in this thing.”
Hernandez refocused her on their session, stressed he needed “yes” or “no” answers only, and asked her to stop fidgeting.
“I’m going to ask you some questions now. Answer me truthfully to the best of your ability. Is your true first name Sandra?”
“No.”
“Is your true last name Serrano?”
“Yes.”
“If I ask you questions about the Ambassador Hotel, will you tell me the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe that I will be completely fair with you throughout this examination?”
“No.”
“When you told the police that a girl with a polka dot dress told you she had shot Kennedy, were you telling the truth?”
“She didn’t say we had shot Kennedy. She said, ‘We shot him.’ I don’t know if she was saying we, you know, her.”
“Okay. Did a girl in a polka dot dress tell you that, ‘We have shot Kennedy’?”
“A white dress, black polka dots,” Serrano clarified.
“Did a girl in a white dress with black polka dots tell you, ‘We have shot Kennedy’?”
“Yes.”
“During the first 19 years of your life, do you remember lying to an FBI agent?”
“No.”
“After Kennedy was shot, did you lie to an FBI agent?”
“No.”
“On election night, at the Ambassador Hotel, did you yourself see a girl with a white dress with black polka dots?”
“Yes.”
“Is there some other question that you’re afraid I will ask you during this test?”
“Like what?”
“Have you tried to answer all my questions truthfully?”
“If possible.”
“You can relax now. Okay, remember I told you to try and answer all my questions with one word, yes or no.”
“Yeah, but they can’t be answered like that.”
“Well, then we’ll review them, okay? Are you afraid right now?”
“I’m not afraid, I just don’t like it.”
“No, no, you’re afraid. You’re afraid. You see, I talk to many, many people.” Hernandez clearly wanted her to be afraid.
But she wasn’t afraid. Not yet. She had an ace up her sleeve. “May I ask you something? When you asked me what my name was, what did it turn out?
“Sandra?”
“Yeah.”
“That you said no, it was meaningful to me. I think you had a different name or you use a different name, whatever it is. I’m not concerned with it though. I’m not concerned with it.” But he should have been, because Sandra had just proved to herself that Hernandez couldn’t distinguish a lie from the truth, because Sandra was her real first name, and she had just fooled him. Hernandez suddenly realized what had happened.
“Look, if you’re not convinced yet that this thing works—” and he went back to the top of his act. “I like you as a person.”
Serrano put the lie to that right away. “I think it was rotten in the beginning because you never mentioned it to my aunt that we were gonna take a polygraph.”
“Oh yes I did. I told her this morning,” Hernandez said.
“She said you just wanted to talk to me, ’cause I asked her.”
“Well Sandy, uh, Sandy, look,” Hernandez fumbled.
“It was never mentioned, and I think that’s rotten.”
“She was in here during the test,” Hernandez lied, as no pertinent questions were asked until after her aunt had left the room and the official polygraph session hadn’t even begun yet.
“Yeah, yeah, I know that, I think this is rotten though. But anyways, go ahead. You know, we’re here, we can’t do anything about it, let’s go and get it done with, that’s the way I feel about it now.”
In a nutshell, everything that followed stemmed from that one moment. Serrano knew this was all a set-up, but she also realized she was stuck. The LAPD were never going to stop questioning her until she gave them what they wanted. And she knew what that meant: a retraction. She tried to play along as nicely as she could, to give Hernandez an out. But she clearly didn’t want to have to lie to do so.
Hernandez asked her, “Do you think that I’m being fair and honest with you?”
“I’m sure that you’re a fair and honest person, but the job you have to do may not be fair and honest.”
Hernandez twisted this to imply Serrano meant that investigating the “death of a Senator” was a “rotten job.” Serrano tried to explain.
“I understand that … what the public might seem, think is wrong and everything is really the right thing and this is a job and it has to be done…”
“Do you know why it has to be done?” Hernandez asked.
“Because if this is greater than what it seems to be right now, it could cause a big hassle between countries. You know, it could possibly lead to another war,” Serrano answered, showing an astute understanding of how the world worked. Clearly, Serrano felt this was a conspiracy the police needed—for whatever reason—to cover up.
Hernandez couldn’t let that stand, however. He told Serrano the people they needed to be concerned with were “the family of Senator Kennedy. They’ll never know, until people come forward and are truthful with this thing—”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Because they don’t know. And they want to find out what happened to their father. The kids do. Ethel wants to find out what happened to her husband. This isn’t, this isn’t a silly thing.”
Serrano saw right through him. “Oh, I know it’s not a silly thing, but don’t come with this sentimental business, let’s just get this job done.”
Hernandez interrupted her here, breaking her rhythm, not letting her finish, and claimed he was only interested in the truth. She told him to leave the Kennedy family out of it, because it was an emotional subject to her.
Hernandez backed off for a moment. He asked whether she was left-handed, whether she was born in Ohio, and other innocuous questions before returning to the main subject. When he questioned her, Hernandez insisted on using the wrong set of words. Serrano consistently stated, in every interview, that the words were, “We shot Kennedy,” not “We have shot Kennedy.” Whether this reflected deliberate deception or ignorance on Hernandez’s part is anyone’s guess. How can one “truthfully” answer such a question?
Hernandez repeated the same questions over and over, slightly reworded, and followed them up with “did you lie” or “did you make up the story” to several of the questions.
No matter how he approached the question, Serrano stuck strongly to her story. So Hernandez moved on to his next approach.
“Sandy, I’m not gonna ask you any more questions, not a single one. I do want to talk to you like a brother. Look, I don’t know what religion you are. I’m Catholic. Are you Catholic?”
“I don’t believe in religion.”
Hernandez tried another approach. Three times in a row, Hernandez told her “I talked to 19 girls” and added, the last time, that “there’s been only two girls that I really believe loved Kennedy. … that I really sincerely [believe] did it, not for publicity…but because they were sorry about what happened and they loved President Kennedy, uh, Senator Kennedy. And I think that you’re one
of these girls, and I sincerely believe this. So what, here’s what you have to think about right now.”
“Uh huh.”
“I think you owe it to the late Senator Kennedy, to come forth, be a woman about this. If he, and you don’t know and I don’t know whether he’s a witness right now in this room watching what we’re doing in here. Don’t shame his death by keeping this thing up. I have compassion for you,” said the man trained by the CIA to interrogate prisoners in foreign countries.204 “I want to know why you did what you did. This is a very serious thing.”
“But I seen those people!”
“No, no, no, no Sandy!” Hernandez said, his voice and temper audibly rising. “Remember what I told you about that you can’t say you saw something when you didn’t see it?”
“She said that to me,” Serrano replied emphatically.
“I can explain this to the investigators where you don’t even have to talk to them and they won’t talk to you. I can do this. I can sit down with you and your aunt in the next room and I can guarantee you that nobody will ask you one more question about this,” Hernandez lied. He was not in a position to promise that to anyone.
“I want you to be able to rest yourself, after what I’m telling you right now, because you know it’s true. I want you to be able to go home and rest. I don’t know if you’ve been sleeping well at night or not, I don’t know this. But I know that, as you get older, one of these days, you’re gonna be a mother. You’re gonna be a mother, you’re gonna have kids, and you know that you can’t live a life of shame, knowing what you’re doing right now is wrong.”