A Lie Too Big to Fail

by Lisa Pease

  Years later, a panel of experts tried to dismiss Harper’s findings by claiming he had been looking at imperfect two-dimensional photographs of the bullets. But Harper examined the bullets by hand, in person, about “twelve or fourteen times, perhaps”277 over a seven-month period.

  On December 28, 1970, Harper completed and signed a notarized affidavit of his findings in the case, which he summarized this way:

  (1) Two .22 caliber guns were involved in the assassination.

  (2) Senator Kennedy was killed by one of the shots fired from FIRING POSITION B [a position behind Kennedy], fired by a second gunman.

  (3) The five surviving victims were wounded by Sirhan shooting from FIRING POSITION A [in front of Kennedy].

  (4) It is extremely unlikely that any of the bullets fired by the Sirhan gun ever struck the body of Senator Kennedy.

  Harper was a conservative individual, not some wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, hence the cautious wording. He had the requisite background to accurately examine the evidence. For that reason, his December 28, 1970, affidavit caused a firestorm of concern that was not easily answerable.

  But Harper appeared to have gotten one thing wrong: there’s literally no physical evidence that proves Sirhan fired any of the bullets. Wolfer had left behind not one scintilla of scientific evidence to prove he had successfully matched any of the victim bullets to Sirhan’s gun or to any test bullets fired from Sirhan’s gun. He kept no photos of these comparisons, despite having a device designed for that purpose in his lab, and the X-rays he had taken of the doorframes and ceiling tiles were destroyed. There was literally no evidence that would allow anyone to independently verify Wolfer’s claims of a match between Sirhan’s gun and any of the victim bullets or his assertion that eight and only eight bullets had been fired in the pantry. And a key piece of evidence that did exist, the evidence envelope for the test bullets, had the wrong gun number on it. Someone had clearly fired from Sirhan’s vicinity, a point we’ll return to in later chapters. Someone had clearly fired from Sirhan’s vicinity, a point we’ll return to in later chapters.

  At this point, the LAPD faced a difficult choice. They could either admit there was a conspiracy that they had not solved, and admit that one of their own had fudged the evidence to implicate Sirhan alone, or they could close ranks and double down on their previous statements.

  Remember, Wolfer’s credibility issues didn’t impact solely the Kennedy case. As we saw in a previous chapter, Wolfer was all but accused of perjury in the murder trial of former Los Angeles D.A. Jack Kirschke. One could argue the LAPD closed ranks behind Wolfer every time he was accused of being less than honest in any case, because to admit to fraud in any of them could have meant reopening all of them.

  Given the choice between spending millions to right numerous wrongs, and possibly sending some of their own to jail, or doubling down on the lies, what the LAPD did next was predictable. In the spring of 1971, the LAPD promoted DeWayne Wolfer to the head of its crime lab.

  Upon learning of Wolfer’s promotion, a local Los Angeles lawyer named Barbara Blehr said what the California Supreme Court would stop just short of saying: that Wolfer had committed perjury. Blehr collected affidavits from experts and attached them to a four-page letter she sent to the Los Angeles Civil Service Commission in an effort to block Wolfer’s nomination. She accused Wolfer of having violated, in different cases, six basic precepts of firearms identification, such as these:

  The positive identification of an evidence bullet as having been fired from a particular gun and no other must be based on a comparison of the evidence bullet with a test bullet recovered from the same evidence gun and no other. …

  A single land of the rifling of a firearm can produce only one land impression on a fired bullet.

  Blehr wrote that in the Kirschke case, Wolfer had matched “a single land impression on the test bullet with TWO [sic] different land impressions 120 degrees apart on the fatal bullet. This amounts to saying that a single blade of a plow cuts TWO furrows in the ground over which it moves—an obvious impossibility …. His testimony combined with his very esoteric photographic manipulations label his work in this instance nothing but perjury,” adding, “Exhibits substantiating these statements are in my possession.”

  Blehr also referenced the Sirhan case (SC No. A233421) to point out how Wolfer had violated four precepts there, pointing out, as Harper had noted, that the bullet envelope suggested strongly that the test bullets did not come from Sirhan’s gun (H53725) but from a wholly separate gun (H18602). “The only possible conclusion,” Blehr wrote, “is that two similar guns were being fired at the scene of the crime.” And that conclusion, Blehr wrote, “leads unavoidably to the question: which of the two guns fired the fatal bullet?” In regards to the Sirhan case, Blehr commented:

  I find it hard to believe that a man of the professed expertise of Mr. Wolfer could violate four of the basic precepts of his profession in a single case by sheer accident. I am more inclined to believe that these violations were made in response to an overzealous desire to help the cause of the prosecution. The choice seems to be rank incompetence on the one hand or morbid motivation on the other.278

  In a third case, Blehr accused Wolfer of making “physical alterations of certain inscriptions on three rifle cartridge cases,” noting that in the trial testimony, Wolfer had admitted to altering one of them but denied altering all three. She called this “scurrilous tampering” made in “a vain attempt to make the physical evidence support the prosecution’s theory of the murder.” In other words, Wolfer had provably altered evidence in a prior case, making it easier to believe he altered evidence in the Kennedy case as well.

  Blehr’s bold accusations made headlines in Los Angeles. Wolfer responded by filing a libel suit against Blehr for two million dollars. Wolfer must have known that the LAPD and County essentially had little choice but to back him. Indeed, LAPD Chief Edward M. Davis summarily dismissed the charges against Wolfer as nonsense, saying Blehr’s charges were simply a “vendetta” and that Wolfer was, in his estimation, “the top expert in the country.” What else would an LAPD chief say about accusations that not only challenged the official verdict in the Robert Kennedy assassination but could have exposed the LAPD to hundreds of lawsuits from people who might credibly claim they had been wrongfully convicted by Wolfer? Of course he defended the LAPD. But his statement deserves little credibility for that reason, a point journalists should have noted in their reporting.

  Ironically, Wolfer’s suit ended up doing more damage to him than anything Blehr had charged him with. In the sworn statements he gave for the suit, Wolfer revealed interesting and important information about the bullets in the case. For example, when Wolfer was interviewed by the Board of Inquiry that convened to address Blehr’s concerns, he said he did not have gun H18602 until June 10, 1968.279 Wolfer’s log of activities, however, indicated he had conducted a gun test on June 8, when Sirhan’s gun had already gone to the Grand Jury.280 So either Wolfer misstated (or lied about) the date he first had the gun, or he had used a “third” gun on June 8 at California State College at Long Beach for the chronograph tests he performed (speed, rapidity, distance). Wolfer mentioned the “Long Beach State” tests, sans the date, during his deposition in the Blehr case:

  Q: How many guns did you use, other than H18602, and the Sirhan gun 53725, in your testing for sound, muzzle distance, whatever?

  A: I believe this was the only gun that we used.

  Q: What test exactly, did you use?

  A: For the sound test—I am sorry, but that is for the sound test and the muzzle distance test. Those are the only two tests.

  Q: Those were the only two tests that you ran?

  A: No, I am sorry. I did run a test down at Long Beach State on the cc. Those were the three tests that I recall here today.

  Q: And this gun, H18602, was used for all those tests?

  A: I believe it was, to the best of my recollection here today. I am not sure.
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  Recall that during the trial, Wolfer had said he had used a gun that was “within a very close serial number of this weapon” for the muzzle distance powder-burn-pattern tests he had conducted with Coroner Noguchi on June 11.281 H18602 was not a “very close serial number” to H53725. And Wolfer’s “I am not sure” leaves the door open to the use of a “third” gun, possibly the gun that was identified by Karl Uecker at the trial with the serial number H58725, a number which was a much closer serial number to the H53725 gun taken from Sirhan and provided by Rafer Johnson to the police after the shooting.

  Either way, the fact that the wrong gun number was on an envelope dated days before the gun ostensibly entered the case showed the chain of evidence around the test bullets was, at best, untrustworthy and at worst, the result of sinister machinations.

  Wolfer’s libel suit against Blehr was ultimately ordered dismissed by conservative California Superior Court Judge David Eagleson, who stated that Blehr’s letter was a privileged public record not subject to defamation laws. The ruling came one day before the case went to trial, a trial that would likely have further exposed Wolfer’s mishandling of the evidence in the Robert Kennedy case.282 Given what the evidence was revealing, the dismissal of Wolfer’s libel suit.

  Wolfer’s appointment also caused concern to Evelle Younger’s friend Marshall Houts, who, like Younger himself, was a former FBI and OSS man. A lawyer and a teacher, Houts wrote and taught about the law and medicine. One of Houts’ 44 books, Where Death Delights, became the inspiration for the popular TV series Quincy, starring Jack Klugman.

  In a “personal and confidential” letter from Houts to Evelle Younger, who had recently left the D.A.’s office to become California’s Attorney General, Houts expressed concerns about Wolfer:

  I have no personal interest in this matter, but do have a deep academic and professional concern over Wolfer’s horrendous blunders in the past and those he will commit in the future if he continues on his present assignment. I am also concerned that you and the present District Attorney stand a strong chance of getting burned by Wolfer’s misdirected hyperenthusiastic procedures and testimony.283

  Houts knew the experts cited in Blehr’s filing and wrote they were “all men of great integrity and professional competence,” adding that charges that their statements were made out of professional jealousy or that the men were out to “get” Wolfer were “totally absurd.” Houts added:

  Wolfer suffers from a great inferiority complex for which he compensates by giving the police exactly what they need to obtain a conviction. He casts objectivity to the winds and violates every basic tenet of forensic science and proof by becoming a crusading advocate. This is rationalized as being entirely legitimate since the accused is guilty anyway which makes the social objective worthy of the means required to obtain it. … Unfortunately, there are many Wolfers in this brand of forensic science.284

  Houts suggested to Younger that Wolfer be “encouraged” to retire, adding that “I know some lawyers who say they will accuse him of perjury and institute every law suit [sic] possible against every possible party defendant if he does receive permanent civil service status.”285

  Harper, Blehr and Houts weren’t the only ones expressing concerns about the evidence. Ted Charach, a freelance journalist who had been at the Ambassador Hotel that night, was making a documentary about the case that contradicted the official version of events.

  Charach in some ways epitomized the worst caricature of a “conspiracy theorist.” He seemed to always be looking for a way to profit personally from the case. He had a rumpled appearance, with pink, pudgy fingers and small eyes that seemed perpetually half-closed. Before Charach tried to sell a film made in the pantry to the LAPD, he showed it to the journalist Fernando Faura. When Faura told Charach he saw nothing of value in the film, Charach said he knew that but hoped the police would buy it anyway.286 Charach even offered to spy on Jim Garrison’s investigation for the LAPD for money, but the LAPD rejected his offer.287

  But whatever his motives, and despite his unsavory character, Charach did important investigative work in the days when most researchers remained focused on President John Kennedy’s assassination and too few were looking into the death of his brother Robert. For example, Charach reinterviewed Karl Uecker, the man who had grabbed Sirhan first during the shooting. Uecker was adamant that Sirhan had not fired the shots that hit Kennedy:

  I was the closest to Senator Kennedy, besides Cesar behind me—Sirhan at no time was firing from behind Senator Robert Kennedy. No! No! Not an inch from Kennedy’s head—I don’t believe that it was Sirhan’s gun firing from back to front in an upward direction. I think I would have seen it. I was the closest one.

  In order for Sirhan to get that close to Senator Kennedy from behind he would have had to pass me and he didn’t pass me at that point. I had him very tight, pushed against the steam table while Senator Kennedy staggered back and Mr. Schrade dropped to the floor first. So this does not fit with what Mr. Fitts told the jury.288

  Uecker also told Charach that while they were looking at Sirhan, “many witnesses missed the guard behind me pull up his weapon and drop to the floor. I did see a guard with a drawn gun and told them [sic] he must be crazy to brandish a weapon in the kitchen chaos.”289

  Uecker said that the police never pursued this line of inquiry with him. He also described how Assistant D.A. Buck Compton told him, during a filmed LAPD reenactment, that Uecker couldn’t have reacted as fast as he claimed he did. This incensed Uecker, because he was there and knew what he had done. Uecker couldn’t help noting that Compton had been appointed by Governor Ronald Reagan “to the Appellate Court, who will now have the judicial authority, we understand, to review the Sirhan case” then under appeal. Uecker said he was certain he had grabbed Sirhan after the second shot, not the fourth shot. He noted that Fitts, too, had been elevated to a position on the California Superior Court after essentially lying to the jury and claiming Uecker had grabbed Sirhan after the fourth shot. Fitts clearly understood that if Uecker had grabbed Sirhan after the second shot, then someone else had to have shot Kennedy at least twice, as Kennedy had provably been shot four times from near-contact range.

  In addition to Uecker, Charach found a second witness who had seen Cesar with his gun drawn in the pantry at the time of the shooting. Donald L. Schulman, a runner for the Los Angeles television station and CBS affiliate KNXT, had been interviewed by the station’s own Ruth Ashton Taylor right after the shooting. Schulman was the first witness to accurately note that Kennedy had been wounded three times. He claimed he saw the bullets hit Kennedy directly. In the first few hours, the story was that only two shots had hit Kennedy, not three. Schulman told the reporter he had seen a guard pull his gun and fire, and that Kennedy had been hit three times.

  Charach put Schulman’s statements and an interview he had conducted of Cesar, where Cesar revealed himself to be a right-winger who did not like the Kennedys, together with the evidence that Kennedy’s shooter had to be standing no further than Kennedy’s right side, right where Cesar was standing—the perfect spot from which to fire two shots under his arm—and essentially accused Cesar of being the true assassin of Robert Kennedy.

  When Charach made this accusation public in his documentary, Kaiser contacted Cesar and asked him why he didn’t sue Charach. Cesar told Kaiser that Charach had no money and it would cost more to sue than he would get in return. But was that his only reason? Suing also exposes one to “discovery,” a legal process by which the opposing party can ask wide-ranging questions. And Cesar had provably lied about an important point, claiming he had sold a gun he owned at the time of the assassination months before the assassination, when in fact the receipt of the sale showed he had sold it well after the assassination. Cesar had also indicated to the buyer there might be an issue with the gun. Cesar also had something else significant to hide, but that’s getting ahead of the story.

  In his taped 1971 interview, Schulman said he had bee
n interviewed two days or so after the shooting by someone from either the police or FBI. Schulman said he told the police when he had first been interviewed that he had seen other guns, plural, but the policeman taking his statement told him he must have been mistaken, as other witnesses said no one said anything about other weapons, and that Kennedy could only have been shot twice.290

  In the LAPD summary of Schulman’s August, 1968, interview, Sergeant Paul O’Steen wrote that Schulman had been “forced by crowds following Kennedy to go through double doors and was just outside the serving kitchen when he heard noise like firecrackers. Saw woman bleeding and Kennedy on floor. Did not see actual shooting or susp. due to crowd. Saw no woman in polka dot dress. Did not take photos. Thinks he saw three gunshot wounds when he looked at Senator.”291

  O’Steen’s summary is misleading on some points and incorrect on others, begging the question of whether that was deliberate. The pantry is “outside” the serving kitchen, which was to the north of the pantry area, but O’Steen makes it sound like Schulman was outside the pantry, when he was not.292 And Schulman’s statements made immediately after the shooting and on tape ever since indicate clearly he was right behind and to the right of Kennedy when the shooting began. He saw a man step out and fire a gun, he saw Kennedy hit three times, and he saw a guard fire a gun. Schulman was fuzzy on the sequence. In an interview with the D.A.’s office, Schulman stated he never meant to say that Cesar had shot Kennedy. Schulman explained that he meant his comments as two separate statements, that he saw Cesar pull his gun and fire, and he saw Kennedy hit three times, but that he could never say for certain that Kennedy was hit by the guard’s gun.293 But Schulman never said the guard did not hit Kennedy, either. He just wasn’t sure who hit Kennedy, only that multiple guns had been fired.

  When Schulman was asked by his interviewer in 1971 if he was “absolutely certain” he had seen the guard fire, Schulman responded, “I’m pretty sure in my mind, yes.”294 He was equally adamant that at the moment of the shooting he had seen at least three different guns drawn in the pantry.295 He continued to reiterate that point when interviewed a last time in 1975.