[9] Here’s Where You and I Part Ways

Investigative journalist Dan Moldea finds the man he believes assassinated Robert F. Kennedy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dan, can you just say a few words so I can.
My name is Dan Elda, maybe a little up on
his side. I'm in Washington, DC with investigative journalists Dan Maldea.
In our last episode, while writing a book about the
RFK case, Well, Dad talked to a lot of the
cops who worked the crime scene, and he zeroed in

(00:21):
on a man he suspected had fired a second gun
in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, a security guard
by the name of Thane Eugene Caesar. Caesar was he
was nothing if not enigmatical with regard to the plot
of the Sevenants. I mean, I laughed. Now when you
hear this thing, you'll see You'll see what I'm talking about. Yeah,
this thing is ready to go with a second tape yet,

(00:43):
let me check you. Well, Da had been told Caesar
was dead, but then he discovered Caesar was very much alive,
and he recorded an interview with him. My producer Jesse
and I are here to make a copy of this
never before released thirty year old tape. These tapes that
we're hearing, what we'll be hearing on them is this

(01:05):
is my first interview with Caesar. This is me asking
Caesar questions, you'll hear my voice Caesar's voice, and then
you got a transcript of it here? Yeah, we got
a copy. It wasn't easy to convince Molday to let
us use this tape. So Jesse and I are copying
it now during our interview, hoping he doesn't change his mind.
How's this going? Okay, let's go where you at on this?

(01:29):
Where am I? Yeah? Like what I think? I go
back and forth everything I can relate to today. On
the RFK tapes, Dan Moldea finds the man he believes
killed Robert Kennedy and a controversial ending to that book

(01:50):
of his. I'm Zach Stewart Pontier me the guy who's
put this thing to rest, who's come up with a
solution to these extra bullets and muzzle distance. I'm suddenly
onto the fence. I'm the bad guy here. Paint the

(02:11):
scene for me. Where are you sitting? What does the
office look like? I had it was a Garler Webber's office.
Back in nineteen eighty seven. Well Da made arrangements with
Garland Webber, Caesar's lawyer, to conduct the interview in his
la office. We were in Webber's office Webbers behind his desk.
Caesar's sitting at a chair against the wall, and I'm
seated in between. And I got three tape recorders on.

(02:34):
There was a lot of people thought you were dead.
Oh I know it, and I wanted that a way.
There's a guy in DA's office. What did he look like.
He had a small beard, He has sort of like
a rectangular face. He was not exactly I expected a
fire breathing right wing nutcase. He was not that guy.
I know that you were born on February twenty eighth,

(02:55):
nineteen forty two, in Missouri, that you're six foot, you're
probably a little bit more than two ten hours, not two. Boy.
I had really prepared for us like I've never prepared
for anything like I thought. I thought it was gonna
make history that day. Okay, okay, let's talk about the night.
And this is on June fifth, nineteen sixty eight. At
four forty five, he received a call from the A's
Guard service manager and they needed an extra man for

(03:17):
that night to be at the ambassador. Tell me about
the conversation. The other thing is what people are talking.
Weren't there for his bodyguard. He didn't want anybody guard running.
He didn't want the police, he didn't want us. We
were told that we were there for one reason only
crowd control, nothing else. Basically, he just you know, roamed

(03:45):
around as he was directed, and then at some point
he was directed to go into the kitchen pantry. So
just let me understand it. You were at the at
the at the West store, right at the west pantry.
I spot there and watching speed. That's basically right, gratitude
to my Caesar tells Moldea that after the speech, Kennedy

(04:08):
walked off stage and entered the kitchen. So Kennedy comes
through the comes through the into the pantry, into the
swing door, and then you move right in behind Kennedy. Right,
I had his arm, You had it. You had his
arm just like this. You're holding his arm, just j okay,
So you're holding his arm. Tretend like, I'm Kennedy to
show me, show me how you how you would do it. Well,

(04:29):
he was over here just like this to your laft.
I'm just I'm pushing people back like this when walking
telling him to get back. So he walked up with
a reporter to what it was, and then Kennedy pulled away.
He turned to shake hands with the busboy. See your

(04:50):
hand at Murgess, do you cease your hand? No, you've
never seen him. The only thing I ever seen was
the flash, the flashes of the gun going up, So
you never saw the guns. Caesar says he never saw
Sirhan with the gun, but he did see how Senator
Kennedy reacted to the shooting. He turned completely sideways so
that his side of his neck was facing almost percondictor

(05:15):
to the gun shot, so he was perpendicular to the
shots when you were the only person who knew exactly
where he got yet, and we're the only person because
I was the closest person to him. You're right up
on the march. Yeah, I was real real close inches right, yeah,
interest yeah, because you had said to the police that
you thought that her hand was actually firing at you.
You thought that the shots looked like all I seen

(05:37):
was the flash the gun shots go off, and the
flashes went off. I hit the deck. You ducked, right? Oh? Sure,
you ducked. Yeah. I went down and went down. Okay
did you duck? And then stumble and fall? And when
I got my composer came back up. I brought my
gun out Okay, your gun. You pulled your gun out
of your holster? Was it at your hip? Was it
was it? Did you have your arm extended at a

(05:57):
combat crouch? You know what kind of a gun? Was it?
Thirty eight? Okay? No chance, it was a twenty two?
Right now? Do you still have the thirty eight? No?
And I looked over and seeing that a bunch of
people was beating the shit out of this gun. With that,

(06:18):
I put my gun back in my holster. Jean, how
long How long was your gun out of your holster?
Thousand and one, thousand and two. How long do you
think thirty seconds or thirty seconds your gun was out
of your holster? Okay, you put your gun back into
the holster then, and that's when I went over to
this area here to keep people from coming in. Caesar

(06:39):
says that as soon as the shooting ended, he ran
out of the room. Okay, I'm gonna get rough with
you now, okay, okay. Now. One of the things that
really puzzles everybody is the fact that your hand had
eight shots in his gun. He had an eight shot
Ivor Johnson, So your hand fired all eight shots. If
you prove one more bullet, it means there's a second gun. President. Okay,

(07:02):
these are photographs. This is this is a this is
an Associated Press wirefold. Well DA shows Caesar that photo
of possible extra bullet holes in the pantry door frames.
Gene is, this doesn't seem any way that Sarah had
fired all these shots by himself. There had to be
somebody here. I want to tax your mind as to
what else you saw that night, who else it could
have been? And chances are the best people look as

(07:24):
the guys who had guns in their hands, first of all,
And this is exactly what the police are didn't told me.
And of course you know these people want to stupid.
He says, if as close as you were, if you
would have had a twenty two and would have shot
Kennedy as close as you were, it would have been
powderburn residues all over the back of his neck or
anywhere else that you had hit him with the twenty two.

(07:46):
There would have been powder burns right tremendous amount me
because you're talking about a very short distance. Okay, I
have a photographs here of the powder burns on Kennedy's jacket.
These are entice powder burns. This is it. This is
the point playing shots. But what he was telling me,
he says, if you were close as you were, would
have been a larger area of powder burns, you know,

(08:08):
instead of instead of what you see there, there would
have been a tremendous So well, here, here's here's here's
what the autopsy, The autopsy and the police owned investigation
shows that the shots, all four shots hitting Kennedy from
the rear, all four. The shot that went into his
ear was one inch away. The shot right here is contact.

(08:31):
That's a contact shot. I mean, somebody put the gun
right in his back and pulled the tree. You're probably
you're probably one hundred percent right, But I have no
way of determining how close her hand was. You see
what I'm saying. I mean, he could have been one
inch away, he could have been six feet away. See,
then we have to work on and then we have
to look at what the other eyewitnesses saying. Nobody, I

(08:52):
mean nobody says this her hand ever got closer than
a foot and a half away. He being behind him,
be a little harder to shoot him in front. Anyways,
the ones that went into hear, these photographs are showing
that he was hit from the rear that the shot.
In other words, this is this is what the shots showed, Gene.
With all due respect, Gene, it was it was at
the angle that you were standing. It's at the angle

(09:13):
you were standing. I'd have to get down on my
knees to make at that anyway, not at all, Gene,
Because you said that you pulled the gun out at
your hip at a forty five degree angle. That's what
you said to the police. Try but that was after
the shot from fire. Well, remember there were two stories
on that, whether you pulled your gun before or after.
Remember that I know, and what I'm saying, Gene, is
that's why you're taking a lot of shiite. Because you
say you draw your gun beforehand, you had it at

(09:36):
your hip at a forty five degree angle. You hit
Kennedy with the first shot, he starts to fall, you
hit him with the second third, and in the fourth
shot you take, you know, is the fatal shot at
a sixty seven degree angle. The thing is is that
just let me ask you this point blank, did you
shoot Bobby Kennedy intentionally or accident down? Okay, what I'm wondering, Genus,

(09:56):
is there anyway it could have been an accident. You
don't seem to be a hit man. You don't seem
to be a guy who's undermine control or anything like that.
There's no way it could have been an accident under
those circumstances. You know, if you fired in you know,
while you were in trouble or something like that. You know,
it's understood no matter what anybody says or what any

(10:20):
report they come up with. You know, I know I
didn't do it. Police department knows I didn't do it.
There's just a few people out there that want to
make something out of something that isn't there. Even though
I know what you're saying, some of the evidence shows
that it could have been. You were at point blank range.
You were the only person at point blank range in
this thing. She's not better go give myself in. We

(10:42):
just kind of laughed at me, just kind of blew
me off, and you know, in good humor, he said,
you know, I didn't do it. I don't think I
ever caught him off balance. People are accusing you of murder.
I mean people are accusing you or murder. It can
accused me of being a queer, but it doesn't mean
I am. But how did you how did you How
did you feel about that? Being accused of murder, especially

(11:03):
murdering somebody like Bob Kennedy, which really changed the course
of history in this kind didn't bother me because the
police department, like they told me, there's no way we're
going to prosecute you, and we know that you didn't
do it. We got the man and did it. We're
happy with it. And this despite my passionate belief that
I was going to break his ass down and get
him to confess, he just pretty much. I don't think

(11:25):
I ever even had him concerned during the thing, because
he was convinced that he didn't do it. I have
to tell you, Gene, you're not what I expected. I
really expected this. You know. I'm sure you're a tough
guy and everything else. But I Gene, you know, from
the bottom of my heart, I hope you didn't do this.
I think you're a nice guy. I might like to
do it, and I needed some test or measurement to

(11:48):
figure out how much time and money I was going
to spend going after this guy's ass. And so I said,
are you willing to be polygraphed? Yeah? I would take
one right now if you could set it up right
now for the Day to give me a lot of
detect of this random all and take it and would
not be a bit afraid of it. I'll take one, Okay,
let me range it. I'll range it, sir, don't bother me.

(12:13):
Moll Day arranged for Caesar to take a polygraph exam
with an expert in la and what I said to
myself was, if he passes this, saying I'm going to
ease up. I don't think a polygraph should put somebody
on the hook, but I think it should help take
him off a hook. Well, Day had breakfast at a
nearby diner and met up with Caesar when the polygraph

(12:33):
was over. I remember Caesar saying to me, he says,
I didn't kill Bobby Kennedy, but I'm thinking killing you
for making me go through this. He passed. He passed
with flying colors. I was shocked. I didn't think it
was going to do it, so I was as far
as I was concerned. You know, Caesar went off my

(12:56):
radar screen. Well, you have to figure it out. It's
still such a puzzle. It still looks like this is
more Day checking in with our own Bill Klaiber At
the time, Bill was in the middle of writing his
own book about the case. Shadow Club Caesar circumstantially is
as guilty as a man can be. The fucking polygraph,

(13:19):
that's the thing that's still well, Dan, here's where you
and I part ways on that. I don't think polygraphs
are worth shit and and they mostly depend on on
the guy operating the test was great. Yeah, well, you know,
I don't I really, I don't believe passing a polygraph.

(13:41):
I just understand. I just needed again, I just needed
some indication at how much I was going to be
down this guy's throat. Yeah, after all of that, I mean, fuck,
I've got to get this guy off the hook. You're
a real you're a real bulldog on this thing, and uh,
you know, and you're kind of a enclosed fighter and
I'm I'm kind of a lay back guy. And I

(14:05):
don't know. I mean sometimes sometimes you can get in
real close and and not see it either. Do you
know what I mean? It's so exactly what I'm experiencing
it right now. Well, Day began to wonder if he
was spending too much time on a possible second gunman

(14:27):
and not enough time dealing with what was right in
front of him. There was one person who undoubtedly fired
his gun in the pantry that night. Maldea needed to
talk to him. I'm on a track now where I
don't think Caesar did it, but I'm thinking maybe Sarhan did.
So Maldea requested an interview with Sir Han in prison,

(14:48):
and I said, I got this. I'm going to get
this interview, and a week later I did. For the interview,
Moldea would be accompanied by sir Han's brother, Adele and Bill.
I was told by Adele that Bill Claibor was going
to come along with us. I like claiber He was
a very decent guy, very smart and honest. He was

(15:09):
dedicated to his work. The three of us drove up
to Corporate State Penitentiary together and this is like maximum
security stuff here. This was Bill's first time meeting sir Han.
Sirhan as well in the movies, when you go into
the interview someone in prisoner, you go into the prison,
you hear all these echoing footsteps and hear courl doors

(15:34):
closing and all that stuff. And it wasn't like that
so much. You went into a room that was kind
of like maybe a truck stop cafeteria. I mean it
was plainly furnished, and there were some tables, and they
pretty much took everything away from you. You couldn't bring
anything into write with. They wouldn't even let me bring

(15:56):
paper and pencil in there. And then there was a
coke machine and that I was getting a coke when
I could hear Adele say, d'amaldea, see your hands, your hand.
He was still youthful, and he's smart, mild manner, happy
for the visit. He was very nice. He's half my size,

(16:17):
and he was well spoken, intelligent. He listened to National
Public Radio on the radio. While things considered. He and
I are the same religion, we're both Eastern Orthodox. Has
no opinion as to what happened to him in that murder.
He doesn't think that old people put me up to
it or I was hypnotized. I asked him if he
was part of a conspiracy, you know, and his reaction was,

(16:39):
you know, it would have unraveled by now, you know,
Why would I be taking the fall all by myself
after all of this time? He doesn't know. Just I
don't have any memory of the murder, and I don't
have any memory of planning to murder. I likes your hand.
I mean personally, I liked the guy. I was very
friendly towards him, patting his hands, saying, of course, of coursera,

(17:01):
you're almost understood. I found him to be extremely sincere.
You know it. Bring up one thing or another about it,
he'd say, you have to forgive me. I one. I
don't remember, and I don't think about this. You know
a lot more about this case than I do. I
don't think about this stuff in here. If I did,
I'd go crazy, as he had for years. Sir Han

(17:23):
maintained that he had no recollection of shooting Robert Kennedy
or planning to do so. He keeps saying the same
thing over and over again, and it's either he's telling
the truth or he's fucking lying. Dan and Bill checked
in with each other after the vision, and when he
keeps when he says, God after, where other people involved
in this conspiracy? I mean, I'd be the first one

(17:44):
to speak up. And that's the thing that really puzzles
me too. When I hear him say something like that,
I think he was manipulated. So you'd really think he
was manipulated. You have an investigation that you can't rely
on and you have extra bulletion. Then you have a
guy who can't explain himself and who has known no
known context with anybody that he could have teamed up with,

(18:05):
and appears to be sincere. I mean, unless you think
he's lying, which I don't know. Do you ever remember,
you know, telling a lie when you were little, and
then and saying or doing something and then say you
didn't do it, and then you say you didn't do
it so many times that you just believe it until
you're like, really believe it. We all feel that. Yeah,
I mean, so that's possible after all this time. But

(18:27):
I think you'd probably agree with me. He appears to
be a sincere person. And you can say the same
thing about Caesar. Do you have a timetable for your book?
I'm not. I'm not. I'm not doing until November of
ninety four. Well, I'm a pleaser to read it. I
ever get done the watching. Well Da had spent years
writing a book that he thought would end with a
confession from Caesar. He nearly finished it, but now he

(18:51):
realized he no longer had his ending, so he went
to see his editor. I had just given him twenty
seven chapters of my book and he goes, man, I
believe it. It's no doubt in my mind. Two guns
were fired and Caesar did it. And I go, listen,
you know I've been talking to see your hand. And

(19:14):
he goes, what And I said, he may have done it.
And he goes, You've got to be kidding me, And
I said, I said no, I said he may have
done it. He said, you better make this work. But
what you're gonna have to do is you're gonna have
to knock down all this evidence you have of extra
bullets and muzzle distance and everything else. So I had

(19:36):
to go back and reinvestigate all of this stuff. That's
after the break. So um I started investigating everything again.

(19:59):
I investigated everything. Investigative journalist Dan Muldea had started to
doubt the presence of a second gunman, and without a
second gunman, then there couldn't be extra bullets in the pantry.
Simuldea went back to the thing that started it, all
that photo of circled bullet holes in the kitchen doorframes,
and he decided to take a closer look. Literally, I

(20:22):
got a magnifying glass and eat in the holes. You
would see this writing up and down, up and down,
up and down, and I saw seven two three LASO.
I figured seven two three was the badge number? Whoever
circled these holes? Muldea called a source he had in

(20:43):
the LA Sheriff's Department, and I said, who was badge
number seven two three on June fourth, nineteen sixty eight.
And he put me on hold for two seconds and
he said, that guy's named Walt two WTEW. So I figured, well,
this guy's a criminalist firearms identification expert of some sort,
and so I want to talk to this guy. So

(21:04):
I said, can you give me his contact information? He
says he's dead, but he had a widow. So I
called his wife and paid my respects to his wife,
and I said to her, you know, tell me about
your husband. How long was he a criminalis? How long
was he a forensic guy? And she goes, oh, no,
my husband was a motorcycle cop. A motorcycle cop had

(21:27):
circled the holes. I said, he wasn't a firearms identification expert.
He wasn't a ballistics expert. No, no, no, no, he
was a motorcy And so I was convinced that an
uninformed person had originally marked this so called bullet evidence
and anything that anybody who passed by those things thought

(21:47):
that these were bullet holes and identify. And that's what happened.
I think he had I had all these police officers saying,
there's you know, I saw these bullet holes at the
crime scene and the walls of doorframes since here hands
light of fire, and they saw what they saw and
was after two had marked what he considered to be evidence. Well,

(22:16):
Day is saying that all these law enforcement officers just
walked by holes in the doorframes that had been mislabeled
as bullet holes, and none of them looked closely enough
to notice the mistake. How many bullets were recovered from
the Lantrea cellar, I couldn't give you a number of
to Day and one of the cops, moll Day I
had talked to, came back to tell him that now

(22:36):
he wasn't so sure about what he'd seen. At the
last inter of you told me about that Wolford pulled
two bullets out of the center divider. Were you there
when he did that? No? I was not there when
he was physically doing that. At that point, he's actually
backing off that he actually saw bullets, slugs or anything.
I think what he might have done is he might
have gone back and hey, I talked to some journalists

(22:58):
and he was asking me about these extra bullets, and
I told them and either somebody said to him, oh
my god, you've blown our biggest secret of our major
cover up here, or they said, what the hell are
you talking about? There were no extras. That's something that
will probably never be answered to. You know why no
crime scene has ever pressed steam? Okay, never happened. Yeah,
you've got Let me just say that the evidence is

(23:19):
clear that the LAPD misrepresenting key facts in the case.
They destroyed material evidence, and they obstructed independent efforts to
resolve the lingering issues of the case. That was our
biggest objection with the LAPD's performance in this. If you
don't assume police in competence and these big murder cases,
then you know, a lot of people can believe that

(23:44):
conspiracies occur in these cases, especially when a civilian investigator
like me, with limited access and resources, is looking for
a conspiracy. And I was looking for a conspiracy. These
were not bullet holes. These were not bullet holes. Throughout
the years, anyone inquiring about the LAPD's investigation of the murder.

(24:07):
Had sirs seemed to stumble on something that felt like
a conspiracy, because after three years of asking where are
the doorframes? Where are the ceiling tiles, we find out
they would destroyed? Why were they destroyed? You do not
destroy evidence. I don't care if the evidence is a
mac cruck. You preserve it. You take the doorjam like

(24:29):
if you put it in the box and you mark
a fur hand and you put it in a corner,
you don't destroy it. The authorities are really responsible in
great part for the doubt, for the gaps in the evidence,
and are doing nothing to allay those doubts, and therefore
they have some responsibility in this. They should have been
in a full disclosure, a total cooperation both from the outset.

(24:50):
But I think they were afraid that their work was
going to be challenged unfairly as a result, and there
would be all kinds of consequences to the police department,
and so they decided, you know, let's just keep it quiet.
Everybody screws up, makes mistakes. You imagine what a crime
scene this was, I asked Officer Daniel Jensen, the rookie

(25:13):
cop in the last episode, why the police might hide
information or evidence from the public. Did you get a
sense that there might be some sort of cover up
going on? No cover ups, No, I just described as
screw ups. Back then, there was a real siege mentality
of that police department. But we were more military than

(25:36):
we were police officers. It was us and the rescue assholes.
The chain of command was rigid. We took care of
each other and we didn't make mistakes. If we did,
we buried him. So if there were no extra bullets
and there was no second gun, then how does Maldea
think that sir Han sir Han, who all the eyewitnesses

(25:58):
placed a few feet in front of Kenny, managed to
shoot him at point blank range from behind, as the
autopsy indicated. I think what happened was Kennedy's going through
the kitchen pantry. He walked through. Caesar is on his shoulder.
They're walking through, walking through seventy seven people identified in

(26:22):
the pantry at that time, and that was a very
small area for seventy seven people. As Sarhan with his
revolver pulled opens fire, all these people who had seen
what they had seen was based on their description of
the first shot which miss Kennedy. It was a madhouse
after that first shot, it was a madhouse. These people

(26:43):
were falling all over each other, they were diving for
cover and everything else. But if according to Maldea, this
explains the discrepancies and all the eyewitness accounts concerning how
far Sir Hahn was standing from Kennedy, nobody actually saw
how close he got because every one was ducking for
cover emotion. I mean, if I hear a shot, my

(27:03):
reaction is going to be to move to duck for cover,
to do something. People are going to be in motion
in that room. To think that somebody is just impassionately
just judging the shooting edge that's going on is bullshit.
And how did Kennedy end up shot from behind? Now?
Kennedy's reaction, what's can he gonna do? Go like this?

(27:23):
He's gonna stuck his chest out and say shoot me.
He turns around like this, well, dy, it turns to
the left, raising his right arm to cover his face.
So your hand drives his gun right into him one two, three,
at point blank range. That's what I think. I don't

(27:47):
know if sactions to what I was thinking about, then
I don't remember much what and what happened. You don't
remember much more. I don't remember. You didn't know while
you're being what had happened, basically your hands. Story was
that he has no memory that night, no memory his movements, nothing,

(28:09):
certainly doesn't have any memory of the shooting, going into
the crime scene and gunning down Senator Kennedy. But I
gotta tell you, if you just assumes your hand is lying,
everything falls into placed again. Remember he was he was
shooting that gun all day. He was at the well.
DA reminds me that on the day of the assassination

(28:31):
Sir Hans, Sir Hans spent the entire afternoon at a
gun range shooting his revolver. Another witness, Michael Zackaman, he
tossed her hand practicing at a pistol range seven hours
before the assassination. Zakaman said the defendant used minimag shells,
a powerful bullet designed to kill. He asked Sir Han,
why use such powerful shells? Sir Hans said, I'm going hunting,

(29:00):
and Maldia made another troubling discovery. Sir Han had sent
a letter to his lawyer about an author named Robert
Kaiser who was on a press tour for his book
RFK Must Die. Maldeia read the letter to me. Quote, Hey, Punk,
tell your friend Robert Kaiser to keep mouthing off about
me like he's been doing on radio and television. If

(29:23):
he gets his brains splattered, he will have asked for it,
like Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy didn't scare me. Don't think you
or Kaiser will. Neither of you is beyond my reach.
And if you don't believe me, just tell your friend
Robert Kaiser to show up on the news media again.
I dare him. RBK must shut his trap or die.

(29:50):
I became convinced this guy did it. There is no
doubt in my mind. Serhand did it. The sir han
sir han that Mouldea describes is very different than the
one I've heard about from Bill. And when I was
talking to Moldea, I realized that I hadn't really been
considering the case from this angle. Maybe the guy who'd

(30:13):
been caught with the gun at the scene, who'd written
in his diaries that RFK must die, who would confessed
to committing the murder, maybe he had acted alone, and
maybe police screw ups could explain a lot of the
problems with the case is that the simplest explanation, this

(30:35):
is it. I knew I was going to get up again.
Moldea still needed an ending to his book, so he
decided to visit Sir Han in prison one last time
for a meeting that would inform Moldea's final chapter. I
didn't even attempt to conceal my feelings, I barked angrily
at Sr Hand. You don't remember writing in your notebooks

(30:56):
in which you articulated your determination to kill Robert Kennedy,
and why that's motive. You don't remember getting your gun,
That's means you don't remember having been in the pantry,
getting close to Kennedy and firing your gun. That's opportunity.
Every time you have a memory lapse, it goes to motive,

(31:17):
means or opportunity. Knowing how close to your hand was
to his ailing mother and understanding how much pains your
hand knew he had inflicted on her, I asked, Seer Hand,
when your mother dies, God forbid, are you going to
remember everything and come clean now? Furious with me for

(31:38):
having brought his mother into this, Sir Hand exclaimed, raising
his voice with each syllable change my story. Mister Maldea,
you're a motherfucker. Mister Moldeah, You're a fucking asshole. I
smiled at seer Hand and started jabbing my finger in
his face. Seer Hand, it's Dan, You're a motherfucker. Dan,
You're a fucking asshole. I had just wanted Seerhand to

(32:01):
remember the first name of his last hope, and then
I wanted nothing further to do with this assassin, Seerhand.
But Shara Serhand consciously and knowingly murdered Senator Robert Kennedy,
and he acted alone. I'm just Marlowe. Welcome to the

(32:27):
Channel four news conference today. Our guest is the author
of the killing of Robert F. Kennedy. He is investigative
reporter Dan Malday. You went into this believing that there
was a conspiracy, didn't You Not only went into it,
but I stayed in it. My evidence that I came
up with really kept his case alive for a long time.
I believe that there had been two guns fired at

(32:48):
the scene, and well Day's book felt like a blow
to the conspiracy community. He'd spent years in the trenches
with them and had written twenty nine chapters of a
book supporting their theories, only to end up including in
the final chapter that sir Han sir Han had acted alone.
I wrote a letter at everybody just saying, I, you know,
I hope we could be friends without this conspiracy stuff

(33:10):
interfering with our friendship because I want to get I
always liked I liked all these people. I just I
didn't want to see it end. But for a lot
of people, just I was just an active heresy on
my part. When did you find out how his book
was going to turn out? When it came out? He
had no warning, none that I remember. No, just a

(33:35):
book came out, and I was very surprised and also
surprised at how many The New York Times gave it
two glowing reviews, a glowing review in the Sunday New
York Times and a glowing review in the Weekday New
York Times, two different reviewers, and they both loved it
best things since sliced Bread, really incisive reasoning. I was,

(34:00):
I guess devastated. It wasn't the right word, but I was.
Really It disturbed my mind because when I read the book, nothing,
none of the pieces fit, And how could these reviewers
read that book and come out saying these things that
it was. It was so carefully reasoned when the body

(34:22):
of the book bore no relationship at all to the
conclusions of the book. Anyone who disagrees with me find just,
you know, take the third chapter thirty out of your
frame of reference to just go through one through twenty
nine and use that information as part of your own

(34:43):
personal equation about what happened. Don't let chapter thirty interfere
with you know, your alternative facts. When Maldea and Bell
were both working on their book, they were colleagues trying
to come up with new ideas and theories on a

(35:04):
journey of discovery. I asked Bill if he missed those days.
There was this moment in time for I think for
both you and Dan where you were just on the case.
You didn't have like a side that you that you
had made up your mind about you. You were you
were much more like open to like, oh, maybe it
was this, And maybe some days you woke up thinking, oh,

(35:25):
Gods or him, maybe he did do it. And some
days you woke up thinking, now I come with the memory,
you know, and you were wrestling with these things, and
then both of you had to like pick and you
your book comes out, and now some of that openness
just inherently has to go away, I guess. And it's
much more about like you arguing that that you what

(35:47):
you said in your book was right, and that what
Dan said in his book was wrong. And I guess
do you feel that way or do you know what
I'm talking about? Yeah, I know what you're talking about,
But I don't feel that way because I still think
I am that person. Do I percent know what happened?
I don't, um. But in my opinion, the evidence is
very weighs, very heavily in favor of a second gun,

(36:09):
very heavily. There's no doubt in my mind about it
that sear Hand did ended alone, and that Caesar is
an innocent man who's been wrongly accused. There's no doubt,
because no doubt. I have a tiny bit no doubt
in my mind at all, not there not. Listen. The

(36:30):
one thing that I could be wrong, and this is
there may have been somebody behind sar Hand. He may
have talked to somebody, There may have been somebody pushing
him forward, No doubt, huh. I've always thought maybe that
mob guy Frank you can never really close the door
on a conspiracy theory that always kind of haunts me
a little bit, but especially because he mentions him in

(36:51):
his in his journal and it turns out that just
might be human nature. Number one, we are a pattern
see King U storytelling creature. And number two, um, we're
afraid of things. But when you combine fear with pattern seeking, um,
you're bound to have people imagining fearful patterns. And number three,

(37:15):
on top of that, sometimes people really do conspire. Our
final episode in two weeks, Can We Loved The Start?
Se Crimetown is me Zach Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling.

(37:37):
The RFK Tapes is made in partnership with Cadence thirteen.
For bonus content, check out RFKA tapes dot com. The
show is produced by Jesse Rudoi, Bill Klaiber, Ula Kulpa
and Max Miller. Austin Mitchell is our senior producer, editing
by Mark Smirling, fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. Exceptisode was mixed,

(38:00):
sound designed and scored by Kenny Kusiak with additional music
by John Kusiak. Our title track is Maria Tambien by Krungben.
Our credit track this week is The Feast by Katie Kim.
Music supervision by Josh Kessler and Dylan Bostick at Heavy

(38:21):
Duty Projects. Production assistants by Kevin Shepherd. Our website is
designed by Kurt Coordney, Recording help from Shawn Cherry, Shelby Royston,
Mark Stern and the crew at Tony Kornheiser's Chatter Studio.
Archival footage courtesy of Dan Maldea, the University of Massachusetts
at Dartmouth, and the California State Archives. Archival research by

(38:44):
Brennan Reese. Thanks to Emily Wiedemann, Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Santoro,
Ryan Murdoch, Judith Ferrar, Elizabeth Benham, and the team at
Caden's Thirteen. For more information on the Robert Kennedy murder,
pick up a copy of Bill's book shadow Play or

(39:05):
Dan's book The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy. And if
you like the RFK Tapes, please consider leaving us a
rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
It really helps others find out about the show. You
can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at the
RFK Tapes. Thanks