Legacy of Secrecy (136 page)

angle, and Sirhan” didn’t deny it, and instead “answered with another

question. ‘If I got the money, where is it?’”34 The answer to Sirhan’s

question was literally staring him in the face, since, as we noted earlier,

Cooper had told Sirhan, “You’re getting the best [defense lawyers] and

you’re not paying anything.”35 In addition, it would have made little

sense for anyone to have paid an amateur like Sirhan a substantial sum

before the hit. As we pointed out earlier, Sirhan initially said he expected

only a short sentence if he were caught and convicted, leaving plenty

of time for him to be paid later. As it turned out, free defense from

high-profile attorneys, and protection for his family from more shoot-

ings (and, for Sirhan, from attacks in prison), were apparently the only

rewards Sirhan received.

Sirhan’s trial began amidst much national publicity on January 7,

1969, but Grant Cooper was caught up in conflicts of interest from the

start. The previous week, Cooper had been called before a new grand

jury to testify about the illegal transcripts of the Friars Club grand jury

that he had obtained mysteriously the previous year. According to a

January 10, 1969, newspaper report, “Cooper did admit to the [grand]

jury that he had lied to the Friars trial judge . . . to protect his client,”

Rosselli’s codefendant.36 However, Rosselli’s name was not mentioned in

press accounts of Cooper’s Friars Club problems or in regard to Sirhan’s

trial, press coverage of which quickly drove Cooper’s own legal troubles

from the news.

The possibility of jail time for Cooper wasn’t resolved until almost

four months after Sirhan’s trial was over, when Cooper pleaded guilty

and was fined only $1,000, even though he never revealed the source of

the transcripts.37 Cooper’s distinguished legal career was still in jeop-

ardy, and professional sanctions against him by the California Supreme

Court remained hanging over his head for two more years.38 Because of

those circumstances, Johnny Rosselli and the Mafia had ample leverage

over Cooper for the three crucial years after Bobby’s murder.

As for Sirhan’s own trial, many authors have pointed out that Cooper

essentially capitulated to all of the prosecution’s major points. As Lisa

Pease pointed out, the result was that Sirhan’s trial was “solely for the

purpose of determining his sentence, not whether or not he really was

guilty of the crime.” Cooper simply ignored important prosecution

problems, such as the autopsy’s conclusion that Bobby had been shot

from about an inch away, when no witness placed Sirhan that close. The

defense apparently wasn’t even given a copy of Bobby’s final autopsy

report until after the trial began. When an LAPD ballistics expert testi-

fied that only Sirhan’s pistol and “no other gun in the world fired the

evidence bullets,” the defense didn’t notice that the LAPD’s test bullets

were labeled as having been fired from a different pistol.39

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Later official investigations found the ballistics evidence problematic:

A 1977 report by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office said that “the

apparent lack of reports, both written and photographic, either made

. . . and destroyed, or never in existence, raised serious doubts as to

the substance and reliability of the ballistics evidence presented in the

original Sirhan trial.” A 1975 court-authorized panel of ballistics experts

concluded that the bullets from Bobby and the other victims could not

be matched to Sirhan’s pistol, and did not preclude the possibility that

two guns had been fired.40 Yet Cooper noted none of those problems, nor

others, during Sirhan’s trial, even though Cooper admitted three years

later that he’d been “warned prior to the trial” by an experienced crimi-

nologist that the LAPD’s ballistics expert “could not be relied upon,”

due to irregularities in an earlier case.41

Meanwhile, Cooper was still working on the Friars Club case. Four

weeks after Sirhan’s trial began, Rosselli and his codefendants were

finally sentenced, on February 4, 1969, for the cheating scandal. The

former Las Vegas casino owner who was Cooper’s client received

the longest sentence—six years and a $100,000 fine—while Rosselli

received a five-year sentence and was fined $50,000. Rosselli got an addi-

tional six months for his earlier immigration conviction, to be served

concurrently.42

On February 10, six days after Rosselli and the others were sentenced,

Cooper tried to make a deal with Sirhan’s prosecutor to end the murder

trial. The prosecutor agreed to accept a guilty plea in return for sparing

Sirhan the death penalty, because Sirhan’s shooting had been so out of

character for the young man that the prosecution’s own psychiatrist

could conclude only that Sirhan was psychotic—an assessment that fit

perfectly with Sirhan’s “diminished capacity” defense. But in a private

conference with the District Attorney and Cooper, Sirhan’s judge raised

“the Oswald matter,” in which people wondered what was “going on,

because the fellow wasn’t tried.” The judge worried that if the prosecu-

tor accepted the deal, the public “would say that it was all fixed; it was

greased. So we will just go through the trial.”43

That meant that Sirhan was on trial for his life, but even after Cooper

began presenting the defense case, on February 28, 1969, Sirhan was

opposed to portraying himself as insane or psychotic. Mental-health

facilities could still be relatively primitive in those days, and apparently

Sirhan feared spending the rest of his life locked away in an institution

for the criminally insane more than he feared the death penalty (which

Sirhan actually asked for during his February 25 outburst, mentioned

earlier).44

Sirhan’s case went to the jury on April 14, 1969, and he was convicted

on April 17. The jury voted to give Sirhan the death penalty on April 23,

and pronounced the death sentence on May 21, 1969.45

Without waiting for action to be taken on Sirhan’s appeal, the Los

Angeles Police Department was soon destroying critical evidence in

the case. On June 27, 1969, the LAPD destroyed the ceiling panels and

the door frames that had been photographed showing extra bullet holes,

too many to have been made by Sirhan’s bullets alone. The excuse the

LAPD gave later was that the door frames were “too large to fit into a

card file.”46

Some 2,400 photos from the case were burned on August 21, 1969.

Supposedly all were duplicates, yet crucial photos from the case are

still missing, even today. We mentioned earlier the photos taken in the

pantry during the shooting by fifteen-year-old Scott Enyart, who was

standing on a table to get a good view of Bobby Kennedy. Larry Hancock

writes that “Enyart eventually got back 18 prints, no negatives, and none

of the photos taken in the pantry. After years of legal struggle, he was

awarded the photos [from the pantry by the court]—which were then

‘stolen out of the back seat of a courier’s car’ when the courier stopped

to inspect a problem with a tire on the way to deliver them.”47 With-

out those photos—in the LAPD’s possession, though what the pictures

depicted was not mentioned in the LAPD’s reports—we cannot know

for certain if Sirhan did somehow manage to get close enough to Bobby

to have fired the fatal shot, as Dan Moldea suggested.

Among the other evidence that was destroyed or is still missing,

Philip Melanson lists “X-rays and test results on ceiling tiles and door

frames, spectrographic test results [for bullets], the left sleeve of Senator

Kennedy’s coat and shirt, the test gun used as a substitute for Sirhan’s

gun during ballistics tests, and results from the 1968 test firing of Sirhan’s

gun.” He also points to numerous missing tapes containing interviews

of important witnesses, including those of eyewitness Paul Schrade;

“twelve witnesses with information relating directly to whether Sirhan

was accompanied by a female accomplice”; “five witnesses at a pistol

range where Sirhan was target practicing the day of the shooting”; and

“three associates of Sirhan’s whose background . . . required probing

for possible conspiratorial involvement.” In some cases, reports refer to

tapes that no longer exist, and in other instances, tapes do not appear

to exist for witnesses who supposedly recanted their stories of having

seen Sirhan with possible accomplices.48

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

In destroying or suppressing so much evidence soon after Sirhan’s ver-

dict, some in the LAPD were simply continuing what had begun less

than an hour after the shooting: the depiction of Sirhan as a lone assas-

sin with no accomplices. While much evidence seems to support that

conclusion, its hasty adoption precluded a serious investigation of any

backing Sirhan might have had.

Once LAPD officials had made their conclusions clear internally and

to the press—that Sirhan had acted alone with no confederates—the

essential nature of large institutions caused others on the force to sup-

port the conclusion—not just before and after Sirhan’s trial, but even

years later. This situation is similar to what happened in the JFK case

with Hoover and the FBI, when field agents quickly realized that pur-

suing conspiracy leads was at odds with what headquarters wanted,

and for thirty years the FBI’s public stance continued to support that

view. LAPD officers who backed the department’s Sirhan-as-a-lone-nut

conclusion in 1968 couldn’t afford to admit later that they might have

been wrong, if they wanted to see their careers—or those of their LAPD

mentors—flourish. Decades later, the LAPD as an institution, including

its members with no connection to the original investigation, would still

take action to support its “lone nut” conclusions, not as part of a mas-

sively orchestrated cover-up, but to avoid embarrassment and scandal

for the department.

Chapter Sixty

During the summer and fall of 1968 and into 1969, the investigation

and pre-trial proceedings of James Earl Ray for Martin Luther King’s

assassination were going on at the same time as those for Sirhan Sirhan

in Bobby’s murder. News about Ray and Sirhan usually overshadowed

reports about Jim Garrison’s ongoing investigation of JFK’s assassina-

tion in New Orleans, which was now hopelessly compromised and off-

course, focusing almost exclusively on Clay Shaw.

At no time during the news coverage of any of those matters did

the names of Carlos Marcello, Johnny Rosselli, or Joseph Milteer ever

surface. The press and most investigators similarly ignored Santo Traf-

ficante and Jimmy Hoffa. No mainstream reporter pointed out any

possible connections between the three assassinations. Aside from a

few public figures like comedian Mort Sahl, most commentators and

newspeople in the US avoided even general comments on the apparent

similarities between certain aspects of the assassinations of JFK, Bobby,

and Dr. King.

After his capture on June 8, 1968, James Earl Ray spent the rest of June

and much of July in London, awaiting extradition to the US for the

murder of Dr. King. But even before his return to the US, Ray’s legal

defense started to become compromised by financial considerations and

conflicts of interest. Over the next nine months, Ray would go through

three attorneys, each with problematic connections to associates of

Carlos Marcello or Joseph Milteer, who would help to ensure the roles

of Marcello and Milteer weren’t exposed.

While still in a British jail, Ray told an officer that he expected to profit

from being involved in King’s assassination. According to the officer’s

later testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Ray

expected to be charged only with “conspiracy.” Since the trial would be

held in Memphis (or at least, if there were a change of venue, somewhere

in the South), Ray might not be convicted at all—and even if he were,

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Ray told the British officer, he expected to receive a sentence of only “ten

to twelve years.” Parole could reduce that time significantly, theoreti-

cally allowing Ray to emerge from prison a wealthy man.1

The British court appointed a solicitor for Ray, who asked the solici-

tor to contact two US attorneys whom Ray wanted to represent him.

One was Arthur Hanes Sr., the former mayor of Birmingham, Alabama,

known for winning acquittals for the four Klansmen accused of killing

civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo. The other attorney was flamboyant

Melvin Belli, the drug-linked attorney who had represented Jack Ruby.

Despite their high profiles and fees, Ray told his British solicitor, “I’m not

worried about their fees . . . even if it takes a hundred thousand dollars,

I can raise it. They’ll be taken care of.”2

Melvin Belli passed on the chance to represent Ray, but Arthur Hanes