Legacy of Secrecy (126 page)

brunette near the coffee urn.7

By midnight, Sirhan had left the coffee area and gone through the

swinging doors that led to the pantry proper. Beyond a half wall in the

pantry was an ice machine on the right and steam tables on the left.

Just before 12:15 AM on June 5, 1968, Bobby Kennedy and various staff,

friends, and press left the Embassy Ballroom for the pantry area. Well-

wishers followed, and there would soon be about seventy people in

the pantry area. Ambassador Hotel maitre d’ Karl Uecker took Bobby’s

right hand and led him toward the Colonial Room. Just behind Bobby,

occasionally touching his arm, walked security guard Thane Cesar, his

pistol holstered. Paul Schrade, Kennedy’s friend with the United Auto

Workers, followed a few feet behind. The group passed through the

swinging doors into the main part of the pantry and past the half wall.

Bobby was jovial, greeting hotel workers as he walked through the nar-

row pantry.

As Bobby stopped and turned to shake hands with two busboys, Karl

Uecker noticed a young man emerge from behind the large ice machine

on the right. Uecker thought it was another kitchen worker who wanted

to meet Bobby—but it was Sirhan. Wanting to get Bobby to the press

room as quickly as possible, Uecker nudged Sirhan against the steam

table so he couldn’t get to Bobby, who was still a few feet short of the

steam table. But Sirhan raised his arm, holding a revolver in his hand.

Sirhan stuck his gun to the left of the taller Uecker’s head, pointing the

pistol at Bobby as he said, “Kennedy, you son of a bitch!”8

Sirhan fired two shots, then Uecker grabbed Sirhan’s “arm holding

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the gun” and pushed it “down towards the steam [table].” Uecker threw

his “right arm . . . around his neck as tight as [he] could . . . pressing him

against the steam [table],” as the maitre d’ later testified to the grand

jury. Sirhan’s pistol never got closer than a foot and a half to Bobby, and

now Sirhan was pinned to the steam table, with the assistant maitre d’

now pushing against Uecker to hold Sirhan down—but Sirhan kept

firing wildly.9

Sirhan’s first bullet likely hit Paul Schrade, standing several feet

behind Bobby. Bobby was hit next: One bullet flew harmlessly through

his coat, but three found their target—two in his back, just behind his

right armpit, and the most serious shot entered just behind Bobby’s right

ear. All the shots hitting Bobby entered from the back and had a steep

upward trajectory. The coroner and LAPD all agree that they were fired

from a distance of one and a half inches or less—a distance that is dif-

ficult to reconcile with the idea of Sirhan as the fatal shooter.10

Aside from the four shots at Bobby and one bullet that struck Paul

Schrade, others in the pantry fell from the bullets that Sirhan continued

to fire. According to Uecker, the “shooting stopped for just a moment,”

but then “I felt him shooting [again].” The pistol was wrenched from

Sirhan’s hand and left on the steam table. Though he was pinned down

by an increasing number of people, Sirhan grabbed it and began trying

to fire more shots, as if he was determined to fire all eight bullets in his

pistol whether he was shooting at Bobby or not.11

By the time Sirhan’s gun was empty, bullets had also struck student

Erwin Stroll in the leg, ABC News executive William Weisel in the abdo-

men, artist Elizabeth Evens superficially in the head, and radio reporter

Ira Goldstein. One shot passed harmlessly through Goldstein’s pants

leg, but the other struck him in the buttocks. Schrade and Weisel were

the most seriously injured, though all five would recover.12

As might be expected of a part-time security guard hired only for

crowd control, Thane Cesar “ducked and tried to take cover” falling

forward onto the ground, according to Moldea. Cesar says he lay on the

ground for about five seconds, then got up and briefly drew his .38 pistol,

before reholstering it after seeing the crowd holding down Sirhan.13

As confusion reigned amidst the screams and panic and attempts to

restrain Sirhan, Bobby Kennedy lay on his back on the ground, arms

and legs splayed, a pool of blood growing under his right ear. Cesar’s

clip-on tie had come off and lay just over a foot away from Bobby’s

hand. Busboy Juan Romero kneeled beside Bobby, saying, “Come on,

Mr. Kennedy, you can make it.”

Bobby, his face ashen, asked weakly, “Is everybody all right?”14

Rosary beads were handed to Romero, who pressed them into

Bobby’s left hand, which Bobby held over his heart. That famous image

was frozen in time by photographer Harold Burba, its eerie calm belying

the fierce struggle taking place several feet away, as a growing number

of Kennedy aides, friends, and others piled on to restrain Sirhan. Burba

had begun taking photos only after Bobby fell, but fifteen-year-old stu-

dent Scott Enyart had started taking pictures when Bobby entered the

pantry. Enyart told police he was standing on a table photographing

Bobby when “the shots started to be fired, and I took pictures and kept

taking pictures.”15

Athletes Roosevelt Grier and Rafer Johnson finally made their way

through the panicked crowd with Bobby’s wife, Ethel. As she knelt

beside her bleeding husband, Grier and Johnson joined the struggle with

Sirhan, who was held down by a group that included author George

Plimpton and Bobby’s security man, Bill Barry. The first LAPD officers

had not yet arrived.16

Both inside and outside the pantry, credible witnesses saw individuals

whose actions would later be the source of intense controversy. Nearly a

dozen witnesses saw someone who could have been a second gunman,

either in the pantry or fleeing the pantry after the shooting. In some

accounts, the shooter had a weapon. For example, Larry Hancock cites

the statements of

Dr. Marcus McBroom, [who] had been standing [just outside the

pantry] when he heard the first couple of gunshots. A young woman

immediately ran past him into the Embassy room; she was wearing

a polka-dot dress and shouting something as she passed. McBroom

thought it sounded like “We got him!” or “We shot him!” but at that

instant he was not certain. It became clearer to him as he saw the girl

quickly followed by a young man. The man had a newspaper over

his arm, but McBroom could see a pistol underneath. McBroom and

an ABC cameraman both drew away upon seeing the gun. McBroom

described the young man as an “Arab looking person” wearing a

blue suit and sweating noticeably.17

In addition to those witnesses, numerous others reported a suspicious

woman in a “polka dot dress” and some confirmed the same wording

that Dr. McBroom heard her use. Before the shooting, to escape the heat

and crowds, Sandy Serrano had been sitting on a metal emergency exit

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stairway at the rear of the Ambassador. Earlier, she had seen a young

woman in a polka-dot dress enter through the exit with two men. Ser-

rano later gave the FBI a very detailed description of the dress, since

one of her friends had one just like it. After the shooting, she told the

FBI the same woman and one of the men “came running down the

stairs toward her.” The woman in the polka-dot dress shouted, “We shot

him—we shot him!” When Serrano asked, “Who did you shoot?” the

woman replied, “Senator Kennedy!”18 A worried Serrano tried to find

someone to tell her story to, and eventually found Los Angeles Deputy

District Attorney John Ambrose, who had gone to the hotel after hearing

about the shooting on the radio. Ambrose immediately questioned her,

decided she was sincere, and took her to talk with the police who had

started to arrive at the Ambassador.

Completely independent of Serrano and Ambrose, one of the first

LAPD officers on the scene, Sergeant Paul Sharaga, had a similar encoun-

ter. Six minutes after Bobby had been shot, Sgt. Sharaga arrived at the

rear parking lot of the Ambassador. As documented by Dan Moldea,

Sharaga said that after he headed toward the hotel, “an older Jewish

couple ran up to me, and they were hysterical.” The woman said they

were leaving the hotel near the Embassy Ballroom “when a young cou-

ple in their late teens or early twenties, well dressed, came running past

them. They were in a state of glee. They were very happy, shouting, ‘We

shot him! We shot him!’” When the older woman asked whom they

had shot, the young girl said, “Kennedy, we shot him! We killed him!”

The older woman told Sgt. Sharaga the girl was “wearing a polka-dot

dress.” Sharaga wrote down the couple’s names (the Bernsteins), and

“radioed in the description of the [suspects] a number of times, request-

ing that it be broadcast every fifteen minutes.” Sgt. Sharaga’s first call

was recorded at 12:23 AM.19

Around the same time, the first LAPD officers arrived in the pantry. A

physician had been tending to Bobby, trying to keep the blood flowing

from his head injury so it didn’t build up in his brain cavity. Sirhan was

still being held down by Uecker, Grier, and the Speaker of the Califor-

nia State Assembly, Jesse Unruh. Seeing the uniformed officers, Unruh

yelled, “We don’t want another Dallas here! This one’s going to stand

trial! He’s going to pay! No one’s going to kill him!” Roosevelt Grier

didn’t want to turn Sirhan or the gun over to police, and released Sirhan

only when an officer said the police “basically threatened Grier.” Rafer

Johnson carried Sirhan’s pistol personally to LAPD headquarters, where

he turned it over to authorities.20

At 12:28 AM on June 5, 1968, only thirteen minutes after Sirhan started

firing, Bobby was taken from the Ambassador Hotel to an ambulance.

He was first driven to Central Receiving Hospital to be stabilized, then

transported to the nearby Good Samaritan Hospital, which had a much

larger trauma unit. There, six surgeons worked feverishly on Bobby’s

most serious injury, trying to remove the bullet from his brain.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Sharaga had set up a command post at the Ambas-

sador, ordering officers to “get identifications and license numbers of

everyone entering or leaving the hotel grounds [for] investigating offi-

cers when they arrive.” He sent a note about the Jewish couple and the

girl wearing the polka-dot dress to a detective who had set up another

base in the pantry. However, the acting chief of detectives soon told Sgt.

Sharaga that his alerts about other suspects would be stopped because

the only shooter had already been arrested. Radio logs show that the

assistant detective chief ordered LAPD radio control to stop sending out

the descriptions of the young woman and her male associate, saying we

“don’t want them to get anything started on a big conspiracy.”21

Sirhan was first taken to the LAPD Ramparts station, the one closest

to the Ambassador. Sirhan refused to give his name. The first detective

that talked to Sirhan said “the suspect had no ID. Normally, I started

thinking in terms of, maybe, a hit. That’s typical.” The lack of any ID

would allow time for the hit man’s confederates to flee or secure incrimi-

nating evidence.22

In his pockets, Sirhan had $10.66, plus four $100 bills. He also had

two unfired bullets, one shell from a different type of .22 bullet, and

an announcement for Bobby’s June 2, 1968, rally at the Ambassador.

He also had an article from a May 26 newspaper highlighting Bobby’s

opposition to Vietnam and support for Israel. Though the article lacked

any mention of the Phantom “jet bombers” Sirhan would later claim

were his main motivation for the shooting, the contents of his pockets

quickly painted Sirhan as a shooter who had stalked Bobby because

of his support for Israel, and instantly provided police with Sirhan’s

motive, means, and opportunity.23

That was convenient, since Sirhan continued to resist giving offi-

cers his name. He showed no remorse, and yielded only to small talk

that didn’t touch on Bobby’s murder. Sirhan had seemed dazed at first,

though accounts vary as to whether he appeared intoxicated. No Breath-

alyzer test was administered, and the only blood sample taken was later

destroyed without being tested for alcohol or drugs. For someone who

had never been arrested before, Sirhan seemed remarkably calm, and a

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Ramparts detective wrote in his report that Sirhan “appeared less upset

to me than individuals arrested for a traffic violation.” Sirhan was soon

taken to the main LAPD jail, but since none of the officers were able to

get a name from Sirhan, he was booked and arraigned as “John Doe.”

He was finally identified the next morning, when his pistol was traced

and two of his brothers went to police after seeing Sirhan’s picture in

the media.24

Robert F. Kennedy clung to life though June 5, 1968, but his injuries