The Murder of Marilyn Monroe (49 page)

(
The Second Gun
documentary, 1973: Directed by Theodore Charach and co-produced by Theodore Charach and Gérard Alcan: In 1969, Thane Eugene Cesar asserted he grabbed RFK’s right elbow with his left hand, guiding him through the pantry and said, “I got powder in my eyes . . .”)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, p. 213: “Gunpowder primarily blows back and to the sides from a fired gun, not forward. Powder residue is often found on the face and hands of the person firing the gun . . . Based on the locations of Senator Kennedy, Sirhan, and Cesar, however, the probability that powder from Sirhan’s gun would have gotten into the eyes of the guard would be extremely unlikely.”)

(MELANSON 1994, pp. 65, 69: “In addition to Sirhan’s gun and that of security guard Cesar, Lisa Urso saw another one . . .”)

(MELANSON 1994, p. 65: After the shooting was over, Lisa Urso said the man in the suit with a drawn gun was “by Kennedy.”)

(Rosenthal, Harry F. “Testifies He Told RFK After The Shooting: You Can Make It!” The
Kokomo Tribune
[Kokomo, Indiana]. 16 February 1969, p. 20: Associated Press writer Harry Rosenthal wrote, “Shortly after midnight, Romero saw someone coming toward Kennedy.” Juan Romero testified in court, “I thought it was a person who couldn’t wait to shake his hand. I seen the guy put a hand at the Senator’s head. And then I saw a gun.” Asked if Sirhan Sirhan was the shooter, Romero replied, “I don’t believe that’s him.”)

(“Sirhan Trial: State Will Call 7 Eyewitnesses.” The
Press-Courier
[Oxnard, California]. 16 February 1969, p. 17: United Press International wrote, “All except Romero were definite in their identification of Sirhan as the gunman seized at the scene of Kennedy’s shooting. Sirhan stood up to give Romero a better view of him and the busboy said, ‘I don’t believe that’s him.’”)

(CHACON, RIGO. INTERVIEW WITH JAY MARGOLIS. 9 MARCH 2014: “I’ve known Juan Romero for more than twenty years . . .”)

(Lopez, Steve. “Kneeling Again Next to RFK: Juan Romero Visits Kennedy’s Grave at Arlington National Cemetery.”
Los Angeles Times
. 21 November 2010: “‘Sorry,’ he apologized to his daughter, Elda, and friend, Rigo Chacon, who had made the trip with him from California. ‘If I can get it out of the way now . . .’ Maybe a good cry would help him keep his composure, he said, when he finally stood at the grave.”)

(NOGUCHI 1984, p. 95: Noguchi wrote that “the all-important bullet that had caused Kennedy’s death” was from behind his head. “The bullet had entered the skull an inch to the left of Kennedy’s right ear . . .”)

(JOLING, ROBERT J. INTERVIEW WITH JAY MARGOLIS. 8 FEBRUARY 2012: Robert Joling told Jay Margolis he believed Cesar was Kennedy’s assassin because Cesar was to the back-right of the Senator. While Cesar did fire and hit the Senator twice to his right armpit, it was Thomas Tarrants who was responsible for the fatal shot to the back of Kennedy’s head. In fact, as Noguchi confirmed to Dan Moldea, the two shots to Kennedy’s right armpit were nonfatal and they occurred
before
the fatal shot to the back of the head.)

(MELANSON 1994, p. 78: “‘Well,’ Cesar replied, ‘from where I could see, it looked like he was shot in the head, the chest and the shoulder.’ ‘How many shots did you hear?’ ‘Four.’ This makes Cesar the only person besides Schulman to correctly state that Kennedy was hit three times. But Cesar even knew—or guessed—the approximate locations of the wounds. There were, of course, more than four shots fired, but four did impact on Kennedy (three wounds and the bullet that passed through [the rear of] his [right shoulder pad of the] suit coat).”)

(TURNER AND CHRISTIAN 2006, p. 168: “It is also curious that Cesar’s contemporaneous account locates the exact number and placement of shots and wounds in RFK’s body—inflicted from the rear, his own conceded position—when no such identifications were possible until doctors examined the Senator at a nearby hospital some twenty minutes later.”)

(Rosenthal, Harry F. “Testifies He Told RFK After The Shooting: You Can Make It!” The
Kokomo Tribune
[Kokomo, Indiana]. 16 February 1969, p. 20: Associated Press writer Harry Rosenthal wrote, “Shortly after midnight, Romero saw someone coming toward Kennedy.” Juan Romero testified in court, “I thought it was a person who couldn’t wait to shake his hand. I seen the guy put a hand at the Senator’s head. And then I saw a gun.” Asked if Sirhan Sirhan was the shooter, Romero replied, “I don’t believe that’s him.”)

(“Sirhan Trial: State Will Call 7 Eyewitnesses.” The
Press-Courier
[Oxnard, California]. 16 February 1969, p. 17: United Press International wrote, “All except Romero were definite in their identification of Sirhan as the gunman seized at the scene of Kennedy’s shooting. Sirhan stood up to give Romero a better view of him and the busboy said, ‘I don’t believe that’s him.’”)

(GIZZI, IRENE. INTERVIEW WITH JAY MARGOLIS. 10 MARCH 2014: Morales, Joannides, and Unidentified Man in Profile “were shorter than he [Tarrants] was because he was the tallest in the group.”)

(MELANSON 1994, p. 65: Noting Martha Raines’s observations, Professor Philip Melanson wrote, “He [the third gunman] was approximately 6-feet 2-inches tall, Caucasian, with dark, wavy hair and wearing a suit (not a uniform).”)

(NELSON 1993, p. 17: “It was evening, June 29, 1968 . . . Thomas Albert Tarrants III was twenty-one years old . . . tall and trim—about six feet three and 170 pounds—with brown eyes and black hair combed straight back. Women were attracted to him.”)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, p. 55: Sgt. Paul Sharaga communicated on the LAPD logger tapes, “12:28:53 ‘2L30, description of the suspect; at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard; male Caucasian, 20 to 22, 6 ft. to 6 ft. 2, very thin . . .”)

(TARRANTS III 1979, p. 37: “I developed a great fondness for firearms and marksmanship . . .”)

(JOLING, ROBERT J. INTERVIEW WITH JAY MARGOLIS. 8 FEBRUARY 2012)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, p. 270: “As author Van Praag has scientifically demonstrated [regarding the Stanislaw Pruszynski recording], approximately 13 shots were fired within 5 ½ seconds . . .”)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, p. 85: “Shouldn’t there be some bullets on the scene that identify with Sirhan’s gun? . . .”)

(PEASE AND DIEUGENIO 2003, p. 557: “The serial number of the gun indicated did not match that of the Sirhan gun. The Sirhan gun had a serial number of H53725. The test bullets evidence envelope, however, bore the serial number of H18602 . . . This gun had belonged, according to the LAPD’s records, to a Jake Williams. It does not make sense that someone would look up the record of the Sirhan gun and come up with Jake Williams’s gun number by mistake.”)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, p. 159: “This exhibit [#55], related to the gun identified as a .22 caliber revolver bearing Serial [Number] H18602 and belonging to Sirhan (actually it was not Sirhan’s gun but a gun taken from LAPD Property).”)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, p. 82: “[DeWayne] Wolfer testified that the Sirhan gun was in Grandy Jury evidence (having been admitted into evidence on June 7, 1968) . . . He also stated that he had removed revolver H18602, which was of the same make and model of the Sirhan gun, from the LAPD confiscated weapons collection on June 10 . . . Wolfer further stated that through some inadvertent clerical error the serial number of H18602 had mistakenly been placed on the evidence envelope ‘B.’”)

(Moldea, Dan E. “Who Really Killed Bobby Kennedy?” Regardie’s. June 1987, p. 69: “Wolfer testified at Sirhan’s trial that he was able to match bullets from a test-firing of Sirhan’s .22 with bullets taken out of the victims. Later, however, when the trial evidence was examined by outside parties, it was discovered that Wolfer may not have test-fired Sirhan’s gun at all. Police records show that he test-fired an Iver Johnson Cadet .22 with the serial number H18602; Sirhan’s gun was an Iver Johnson Cadet .22 with the serial number H53725.”)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, p. 174: DeWayne Wolfer lied under oath at Sirhan’s trial that the “Sirhan death weapon and no other gun in the world fired the fatal shot that killed Senator Kennedy.”)

(Moldea, Dan E. “Who Really Killed Bobby Kennedy?” Regardie’s. June 1987, p. 70: “That same year [1971] a formal complaint was filed against Wolfer by [Noguchi’s] attorney Godfrey Isaac and journalist Theodore Charach who charged Wolfer with having made serious errors in several cases, including the Kennedy murder . . . [Former FBI agent Marshall Houts wrote:] ‘Wolfer suffers from a great inferiority complex for which he compensates by giving the police exactly what they need to obtain a conviction . . .’ In 1980 . . . he was also cited by the state court of appeals for testimony in a major case ‘bordering on perjury’ and ‘given with reckless disregard for the truth.’”)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, pp. xxviii, 234-235: “One into Paul Schrade = 1; one into Ira Goldstein = 2; one into Irwin Stroll = 3; one into Elizabeth Evans = 4; one into William Weisel = 5; and four into Senator Kennedy and his suit jacket = 9.”)

(Moldea, Dan E. “Who Really Killed Bobby Kennedy?”
Regardie’s
. June 1987, p. 71: “DeWayne Wolfer’s reconstruction of the eight shots fired from Sirhan’s gun explains his theories nicely, but is not supported by the facts.”)

(“Robert F. Kennedy Assassination: The FBI Files.” Filiquarian Publishing, LLC. 2007, Second Section, p. 9: “Cesar owned a .22 caliber revolver at the time of the shooting . . . at first telling investigating officers that he remembered selling the weapon in the spring of 1968 [months before the shooting], but [later] admitted that he had sold the weapon [on] September [6], 1968, to a friend [Jim Yoder] in Arkansas. This weapon . . . was a 9 shot cadet model .22 revolver.”)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, p. 261: “While Cesar has claimed that he had the Ace Guard Service provided .38 gun with him that night, the police never checked his weapon and he initially told investigators (erroneously) that he had sold his .22 gun months before the shooting.”)

(PEASE AND DIEUGENIO 2003, pp. 551–552: “The official autopsy report was not made available to the defense until after Sirhan’s trial had commenced on January 7, 1969. The first mention of the autopsy report from the defense appears in a memo dated February 22, 1969 that [Robert Blair] Kaiser wrote to Sirhan’s lead attorney, Grant Cooper . . . Kennedy had died on June 6, 1968, and the autopsy had been performed immediately upon his death. In the SUS card index, a card labeled only ‘Medical’ reports: ‘Coroners protocol—Final Summary: 10 pages received 11-27-68 . . .’ What could possibly have kept the autopsy report from being delivered for nearly six months? Was it held back to keep the defense from figuring out that Kennedy was shot at a distance that could not be reconciled with the consistent reports of Sirhan’s position relative to Kennedy’s?”)

(VILLALOBOS, EDGARDO. INTERVIEW WITH JAY MARGOLIS. 14 JANUARY 2013: “We got the call there at the Ambassador Hotel . . .”)

(JOLING AND VAN PRAAG 2008, p. 235: “Robert Hulsman, an ambulance driver for the City of Los Angeles, together with Max Behrman, was dispatched to the assassination scene shortly thereafter. Their ambulance arrived at the front hotel entrance.”)

(VILLALOBOS, EDGARDO. INTERVIEW WITH JAY MARGOLIS. 5 OCTOBER 2013: “They first took him to Central Receiving Hospital . . .”)

(Rasmussen, Cecilia. “A Pioneering Public Hospital Checks Out.”
Los Angeles Times
. 2 October 2005: “Perhaps the most famous of Central Receiving’s patients arrived by ambulance in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968. Robert F. Kennedy had been shot at the nearby Ambassador Hotel after winning the California presidential primary.”)

(Elliott, Osborn, ed. “Bobby’s Last Longest Day.”
Newsweek
. 17 June 1968, p. 30: “But Central Receiving has neither blood plasma nor X-ray equipment, and they had no choice but to send him on to ‘Good Sam’—the Hospital of the Good Samaritan – four blocks away . . .”)

(Stewart, Marilyn. “Former KKK Terrorist Cites C.S. Lewis’ Faithful Obedience.”
Baptist Press
. 9 August 2006: “As an operative for the White Knights, Tarrants was involved in some 30 bombings of synagogues, churches and homes before being apprehended in an FBI sting operation in Meridian, Miss [on June 30, 1968]. In the ensuing shootout between Tarrants and law enforcement officers, Tarrants’s female accomplice [Kathy Ainsworth] was killed and he was shot 19 times, almost ending his life.”)

(NELSON 1993, pp. 17–18, 21, 173–192, 200, 219–220, 233, 263: On June 30, 1968, in Meridian, Mississippi, the FBI opened fire killing Kathy Ainsworth and seriously injuring her partner-in-crime Thomas Albert Tarrants III.)

(TARRANTS III 1979, p. 14: “Ironically, Meridian was the home of one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the United States, Dr. Leslie Rush, who headed Rush Memorial Hospital in Meridian . . . My family talked to him about my situation, and after examining me, he volunteered to operate without charge.”)

(TARRANTS III 1979, p. 95: Thomas Tarrants said how “there were too many for the extra cells on death row.”)

(TARRANTS III 1979, p. 124: “On a bright, clear Monday morning, December 13, 1976, at about 8:30 a.m., a prison station wagon arrived at the pre-release center . . . I was packed and ready to leave.”)

(TARRANTS III 1979, p. 109: “Nonetheless, some wouldn’t be convinced. They no doubt still view my conversion as a gimmick for freedom.”)