October 2, 2018 • 38 mins
Bill takes the reins as he goes through some of the additional evidence that convinced him a second gun was firing the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everybody, Zach here today on the show, I'm taking
a back seat and I'm letting Bill take the wheel.
He's been working with the RFK Tapes team on this
episode with no input from me. By design, even though
we may disagree, I wanted Bill to get a chance
to say what he wanted to say in the way
that he wanted to say it. And so this is
his episode and it represents his views. I'll be back
(00:24):
next week with another new bonus. And I also wanted
to give you a heads up that Crimetown Season two
has just launched. The first two episodes are available right
now on Spotify. Thanks. So, when's the last time you
guys saw each other? I think it was when we
(00:45):
were visiting Sirhan. I think was the last time when
I both visit. It's your hand for the Fif's eight
in the evening and I'm on stage at the Billhouse
in Guanas, Brooklyn having a debate with journalist Dan Moldea
over who killed Robert Kennedy. It was when I was
still in the two Guns thing. Yeah, I know, I remember,
and I was Dan and I hadn't seen each other
(01:07):
since nineteen ninety four. Back then we were both writing
books on the case, and we both believed that a
second gun had fired the fatal bullets. But now Dan
thinks her hands acted alone. We solved the murder. I
solved the case because I showed how the police airs
led to people like us believing that there were two
(01:28):
guns in that room. Okay, so how do we So
Dan and I are on opposite sides of the case.
I think something much darker happened that night in the
pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, and today I'm going to
present some additional evidence that supports that belief. I'm Bill Claiber,
(01:50):
and this is the RFK tapes. The most important evidence
is that of extra bullets. So her hands gun could
hold only eight. You've heard it said by now. If
there were extra bullets in the pantry, then another gun
was firing. I'll start with the account of Robert Redrick,
(02:11):
a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He arrived at the
Ambassador the morning after the murder and went straight to
the kitchen. So I walked back. They're cold, and I
ran into an LA detective sergeant named MacArthur. He showed
me where the senator had come through the double doors
from the ballroom into the kitchen where he had stopped
(02:33):
and shaken hands with some of the help, and he said,
you see that piece of wood that was a piece
of molding about eight feet long. He said it had
come from the center partition of the two double doors
that led from the ballroom into the kitchen. I could
see where it had been taken off, and I was
lying on a low table, and he showed me the
(02:55):
two bullet holes in the thing, and you could see
where an Evidence Nation's probe that dug into the wood
to extract the two expended slugs. Other witnesses said they
had also seen bullet holes, including the corner hotel carpenters,
(03:16):
amateur photographers, and hotel waiters. And there were the accounts
of sixteen law enforcement officers, like some you heard in
episode eight. Patrolman Al Lamarreau told Moldea, I do recall
seeing one or two holes in the door around wherever
he had shot at him. It was just obvious, just
being a dumb cop. You look and see where the
(03:36):
bullets went. LAPD photographer Charles Collier told Moldea, a bullet
hole looks like a bullet hole if you photographed enough
it's Sergeant James R. MacArthur told Maldea that he had
seen quite a few bullets. Albin s Heggie said, I
know that there were some because they took out door.
Raymond M Roland told Maldea that during a tour of
the pantry, one of the investigators pointed to a hole
(03:58):
in the door frame and said, we just pulled a
bull it out of here. Police photographer Charles Collier also
described police detectives running strings from the holes in the
center divider back to where Sir Hann had fired his
shots to illustrate the bullet flight pass. It seems like
a strange thing to do. If the holes in the
doorframe were not indeed bullet holes, then there is what
(04:23):
Officer David Butler told Meldea. Butler had been in the
pantry working under criminalis Dwyane Wolfer, who would be responsible
for like taking like two bullets out of the wall
or so we are, are you? He took the two
bullet bottle the wall that night. Dwayne Wolfer took the
two bullets out of the wall. I know there was
some controversy that developed later. So then the bullets that
(04:43):
Wolfer took out of out of the wall. Would be
just the ones like in a center divider there? Yes,
were you there when he took Yes? Where did you
just tear it out? And then we've got vigits of
a more out? Would yeah, tear it out? Tear it out?
Did wedad to disassemble to find the bullets? Sure seems
like David Butler was there and Saul Wolfer recovered two bullets.
(05:06):
But David Butler would revise his story. You may have
heard it in episode nine where Butler meets with Muldea
again to tell him that he actually didn't see the
bullets being removed. But what Muldea wrote in his book
shows that it didn't think much of Butler's reversal quote.
Butler changed his story about having seen bullets removed from
(05:26):
the center divider after he finally realized that I was
accounting for more bullets than Sir Hans Gunn could hold. Hello,
mister baby there, mister baby, get another bullet hole. Witness
was FBI agent William Bailey. In nineteen seventy seven, Bailey
was contacted by the Los Angeles DA's office to go
(05:48):
over and alf of David he'd given the year before.
I want to talk to you about her. First, I
want to read this AFFI David two years honor about
June fifth, six, nineteen sixty eight, Hi William at Bailey
As in the preparation room the Ambassador Hotel, approximately four
to six hours after the attempt on Senator Robert F.
(06:09):
Kennedy's life, I for instancy several other agents noted at
least two small towerble bullet holes in the center post
on the two doors leading from the preparation room. There
was no question in any of our minds as to
the fact that they were bullet holes and were not
(06:29):
caused by food, cards or other equipment in the preparation room.
Recall that paragram you saw two holes in the senator
door jam that you they were not male holes, and
they appeared to be bullet holes, And that was based
upon your observation of this area. How about any of
(06:50):
the other I'm particularly fond of this conversation because it's
essentially two cops talking to each other with a shared respect.
Had Billy been a civilian, it might not have been
so friendly. Maybe he would have been invited to have
lunch with Hank Hernandez Burnett knew enough not to try
to convince Bailey that he didn't know what he was
looking at. But that's exactly what Dan Muldea tried to
(07:11):
do with the live show. When I brought up Bailey
as someone who had seen extra bullets, they were identified
as bullet holes by William Bailey, who Bailey has had
conflicting versions in this sort of the beginning. The first
person he went to was he went to his Visculiosi.
Visculiosi never mentioned He said that Bailey never mentioned a
(07:32):
word about the about the bullet holes. Yeah, so Bill
Bailey didn't know what he was talking about. Bailey did
not know what he was talking about. That. But in
his book, Muldea goes on about the great respect he
has for William Bailey. He says, Bailey's story about observing
bullet holes is near impossible to discredit. That didn't stop
him from trying to do it at the live show,
(07:54):
sliding around with oddly changing ideas. Bailey gave conflicting accounts.
Bailey never mentioned bullet holes to Buliosi, Bailey didn't know
what he was talking about. None of these assertions is true.
There's one more piece of bullet hole evidence that I'd
like to talk about. A photograph that shows two police
(08:15):
officers inspecting a hole in the pantry doorframe. We posted
it to our website after the live show. The two
officers in the photo are Sergeants Robert Rossie and Charles Wright.
Former Prosecutor Vincent Buliosi spoke to Rozsie in nineteen seventy five,
who told him he saw what he believed to be
(08:36):
a bullet in the hole. Buliosi then spoke to off
Sir Wright. Quote I told him that Sergeant Rosie had
informed me that he was pretty sure that a bullet
was removed from the hole. Sergeant Wright replied, there's no
pretty sure about it. It was definitely removed from the hole,
but I don't know who did it. Years later, Dan
(08:57):
Muldea found Officer Right and asked him, on a scale
of one to ten, how certain he was that there
was a bullet in that hole? As close to a
ten as I'd ever want to go without pulling it out,
answered Wright. If there is a bullet in that hole,
as both officers said, then there is without question a
(09:18):
second gun firing. Perhaps even more significant. Rosie and Rights
required written account of their activities the night of the
murder would appear to have been removed from the police
files and replaced by a third person account of their
movements that never mentions a bullet in the door frame.
This is a clue because if Rosie and Right's original
(09:39):
reports were taken and replaced by phony reports, it would
be a serious crime, and of course they wouldn't know
that had been done because the police files were kept secret.
As we heard in episode nine, Dan Muldea went to
see his editor after his interview with security guard Jean Caesar.
Moldea wanted to change the ending his book and say
(10:01):
that Sir Hann had acted alone, that there was no
second gun. His editor was fine with the change, so
long as something was done about those pesky extra bullets.
After all, you can't have extra bullets and only one gunman.
So Moldea said he would go back to take a
closer look. It's all very dramatic, you heard it. He
takes out a magnifying glass and looks at a photo
(10:23):
of bullet holes. He sees a badge number and wants
to know who was this criminalist? Who was this firearms expert.
Turns out the badge belonged to a man from the
Sheriff's office named Walter Q, who died the year before.
So Moldea says, he calls Cho's widow and asked, how
long was your husband a criminalist? Oh answers Vivian Tou.
(10:46):
My husband was not a criminalist. He was a motorcycle cop.
Moldea is stunned. Now it all comes clear all those
cops with extra bullet evidence had been fooled by this
motorcycle cop who drew circles on the wall. There was
no second come. But Muldea's reinvestigation is a big fairy tale,
a gimmick. Mouldea can get away with telling people this
(11:09):
story now because most people haven't read his book, but
I have. Here's the truth. Moldea didn't talk to Vivian
two in nineteen ninety four during his dramatic so called reinvestigation.
He talked to her in nineteen ninety when he was
starting to interview the cops who were at the Ambassador
Hotel that night. I'm sure Vivian tu told Moldea that
(11:30):
her husband was a motorcycle cop. But if missus Chew's
revelation greatly disturbed Moldea, there is no evidence of it
in his book or in his actions. After their conversation
on he charged doing great work getting police officers to
talk about what they saw that night, but when Mouldea
needed to make it all go away, he said that
(11:51):
all those police accounts of extra bullets couldn't be credible
because Walter CHU wrote a motorcycle. If you want to
believe that, go ahead. I don't, but I do believe
that Walter Q is a key to understanding the Robert
Kennedy murder. Let's follow it out. A little after he
(12:13):
talked to Chew's widow, Muldea got a hold of Cho's supervisor.
The supervisor said that he vaguely remembered that two had
found some bullet holes and that circling the holes with
his badge number was the way they did it. Back then.
Two would then have filed an evidence report, but there
is no evidence report from Walter two in the police files.
(12:34):
As a required part of their investigation, the LAPD conducted
interviews of all the officers from the Sheriff's office who
were at the hotel that night. Twenty three such interviews,
but there is no record of an interview with Walter Chu.
Beyond that, Walter Chu is not even on the LAPD's
(12:54):
supposedly comprehensive list of law enforcement officers who were at
the Ambassador Hotel, though his batch number is on the
wall in the room where Kennedy was murdered. Walter two's
evidence report may have described the bullet holes in embarrassing detail.
He may have refused to change his story when interviewed
by the l a p D. Didn't matter. They had
(13:16):
an easy way out. I believe they made him disappear.
And again they would be able to do this without
fear because no one, including Walter two, would be able
to see their files follow the lies. Early on, Moldea
had become convinced that security guard Jean Caesar was the
(13:39):
one who put the bullets into Robert Kennedy's back. All
the evidence seemed to point that way, But when Mouldea
finally caught up with Caesar, he just didn't act guilty
or sound guilty. And then Caesar took and passed a
polygraph test, so Dan didn't know what to think. I
kept reminding him that the work he had already done
and published pretty much proved that a second gun was firing,
(14:02):
and that didn't change just because he thought Caesar wasn't
the guy who fired those shots. You start with the
near certainty of extra bullets in the room and a
second gun firing that I don't have any doubt enough, Okay,
But if you start there, you have an investigation that
you can't rely on, and you have extra bullets, and
you have bullets coming from a separate direction, and you
have a guy who can't explain himself and appears to
(14:24):
be sincere, And you can say the same thing about Caesar. Well,
you know, you know, you made a convincing case for Caesar,
and you know, I've got to say a former form
that he did it or for him that he did
that he didn't in terms of how his personality is now.
And that's always been a puzzle for me. Even in
(14:45):
the nineteen seventy three documentary The Second Gun, where Caesar
talks about hating Kennedy, he seems unself conscious, not careful
with his words, as one who was guilty might be.
That was a problem for me. On the other hand,
there was a story of Don Shulman, who the knight
of the assassination, gave a breathless account of the murder,
(15:06):
and said quite clearly that he saw the security guard
fire his gun. I'm talking to Don Shulman. Don, can
you give us a halfway detailed report on what happened
within all this chaos? Okay, I was standing behind Kennedy
as he was taking his assigned route into the kitchen.
A Caucasian gentleman stepped out and fired three times. The
security guard hit Kennedy all three times, so Kennedy slunk
(15:28):
to the floor. As they carried him away, the security
guards fired back, right, I heard about six or seven
shots in succession. Now is listening security guard firing back? Yes?
The man who was stepped out fired three times at Kennedy,
hit him all three times, and the security guards then
fired back. The standard argument against Caesar being the guy
(15:52):
who shot Kennedy was that Caesar was supposedly carrying a
thirty eight caliber pistol, while the bullets and Kennedy's back
were from a twenty two. But Caesar did own a
twenty two, and although he was interviewed the night of
the murder, there is no record of anyone inspecting his
gun to see what caliber it was or if it
had been fired. But maybe someone did. And the next
(16:15):
night at roll call, I remember, this is just a
bunch of cops sitting around talking, and that's when the
discussion came up of the second gun. And in Zach's
interview with Officer Daniel Jensen, Jensen said that he heard
other cops talking about extra bullets and about a security
guard who had carried a twenty two. I don't remember exactly,
like they found like one or two many bullet holes.
(16:39):
The guy had a twenty two and it was a
seven shot or nine shot, but there were two many
bullet holes. Sir Hans gun held eight shots, and so
that means that I think then the thief had eight.
Then they found ten the way I recall the two,
there were two too many bullet holes. But you remember,
I'm hearing all this stuff locker talk, and one of
(17:01):
the other officers had noted that the security guard had
a twenty two, which is an unusual gun to carry,
and the cops started speculating, you know what, I bet
he capped at some rounds. This is an extraordinary conversation.
Of course, it's not proof of anything. It's just, as
Jensen says, locker room talk. But if this is true,
(17:22):
it greatly strengthens the case against Caesar, and if Caesar
did it, I can't tell you why he sounds innocent.
Some people are just wired that way, or maybe someone
messed with his mind. The evidence of a second gun
is not limited to extra bullets in the door frames
(17:45):
or the suspicions around Jean Caesar. There are wounds in
Robert Kennedy that are seriously inconsistent with his physician relative
to Sir hand. According to the autopsy, the four bullets
that struck Kennedy were all fired from an inch or
two away. Three of them were fired at a steep
upward angle. Most reliable witnesses put Sir Hans's gun in
(18:06):
front of Kennedy and a foot and a half to
three feet away when the shooting started. It is possible
that Kennedy turned at the last moment, and it is
possible that Sir Hann lunged, closing the distance to create
a contact shot. But given the existing evidence, I believe
it's near impossible for Sir Hann to get four shots
(18:27):
into Kennedy's back at contact range and at a steep
upward angle. Major D. Carl Ucher has said repeatedly that
he grabs her hands wrist after the first two shots,
then wristled him down to the steam table, where Sir
Hann began to fire again. Nine other witnesses said they
pretty much heard the same thing. Two shots, a pause,
(18:49):
and then a volley of shots. If all that's true,
where in that sequence can Sir Hann fire four shots
into the back of Kennedy at a steep upward angle.
This one goes right by the police. So I want
to credit Dan Moldea for recognizing this problem and trying
to deal with it. I just don't agree with how
he solves it. It's a very small area. Everyone was
(19:10):
pushing forward forward four Kennedy was pushed up against the
steam table sere he had had a clear opportunity to
get him four times at For Dan's steam table theory
to work, Kennedy would now have to be on his knees,
facing away from the table, but with his head pressed
up against it. That would be a memorable image, and
(19:33):
nobody saw that. Nobody saw anything like that, And if
Kennedy had taken a shot to the head in that position,
he would have likely been found face down in front
of the steam table and not on his back ten
feet away. What's more, at times the LAPD's accounting of
shots defies what you learned in high school physics. They
(19:54):
said that the bullet that went through Kennedy's jacket and
appeared to be heading for the ceiling was the same
one that ended up in Pulchrayd's head. Of course, bullets
don't change direction mid flight, but no one worried about
that because the important thing was that each wounded person
now had a bullet, and all eight bullets had been
accounted for, so everything's fine, right, Well not quite. There
(20:18):
are two more bullet holes in the ceiling. So some
one comes up with the idea that maybe Sir Hann
fired a bullet that went through the ceiling tile, bounced
off the cement floor above, came back through another ceiling tile,
and hit bystander Elizabeth Evans in the head, and to
this day that is the official explanation. Is it totally impossible? No,
(20:41):
But in my opinion it is highly unlikely. For one thing,
a soft, hollow point bullet bouncing off cement would most
likely shatter or be grossly deformed. But the bullet in
Elizabeth Evans's head was mostly intact in her medical report
said the bullet that struck her was traveling slightly upward.
No matter, the police go with a triple duty bullet
(21:04):
and it flies because nobody's asking questions. So the police
are unable to recreate the murder without magic tricks, and
the best that can be done fifty years later by
someone supporting the police version is a crime scene ballet
that I can't believe. It's a jungle, a tangled mess.
(21:24):
Can anyone make sense out of it? Someone did. In
nineteen seventy, a private criminalist named William Harper was asked
to examine the ballistics in the Kennedy murder. He looked
at the evidence and wrote a report saying the bullet
pathways showed two distinct firing positions. Position A was her
(21:44):
hand firing horizontally east to west, and position B was
a person behind Kennedy firing a gun upward into his back.
No magic ricochets, no bullets changing course in flight, nobody
fooled by a motorcycle cop. If we wanted to prove
Harper's report, we would just need to take a look
at the doorframes. But we can't because in nineteen sixty nine,
(22:08):
just a few weeks after a newspaper article made the
first public suggestion that police had recovered more bullets since
her hand could have fired, the LAPD secretly destroyed the
doorframes and the ceiling tiles. Think real hard, why would
they do that? Okay, let's take a break. When we
(22:36):
come back, we'll get into the new audio evidence and
why I believe Phil Van Prague. In two thousand and five,
Brett Johnson, a senior writer at CNN, contacted Phil Van Prague,
an accomplished sound engineer who had written a book on
(22:56):
recording technology. Johnson asked and Prague to listen to an
obscure audio tape that he had found in the California
State Archives. The tape had been made on a cassette
recorder that belonged to journalist Stanislav Prasinski. Prasynski had taped
Robert Kennedy's victory speech and then followed the senator into
(23:17):
the pantry, not realizing that hiss recorder was still on.
You heard this recording and episode ten, I'll play it
again for you now. Sometime after the murder, the FBI
had reviewed the tape and declared it utterly worthless, just
(23:41):
noise and That's pretty much what Van Prague thought the
first time he heard it, but he agreed to look further.
Van Prague knew that the cassette tape produced by the
Calarchives was a low quality copy, so he asked to
make a better copy of the real to real version
of their tape. They read, but gave him just one pass.
(24:02):
Van Pragge recorded that pass on to five different machines,
analog and digital, to get as much perspective as he could.
Then Van Pragge looked at news footage of the night
to find out exactly where Prazynski was when the shooting started,
how he was moving, what kind of recorder he was using.
After that, he recorded the firing of a twenty two
caliber pistol under a variety of noisy circumstances to see
(24:26):
how the sound might register on the primitive recorder Prazynski
had carried. Then the hard work began, using new computer
technology to tease gunshot sounds out of the noise of
the tape. He worked on this for two years. On
February twenty first, two thousand and eight, Phil van Pragge
stepped to the Dask and presented his findings to the
(24:48):
Academy of Forensic Sciences at their annual conference in Washington.
This will not be on the quiz, but I'll tell
you the title of the paper he presented, which was
Acoustic analysis of gunshot recordings utilizing frequency selective Integrated Loudness
Envelope evaluation. Van Prague explained what he did, how he
(25:08):
did it, and how this work had uncovered thirteen shot
sounds in the pantry when Kennedy was murdered. He located
these shot sounds to a thousandth of a second and
showed how two shot pairings, the third and fourth and
the seventh and eighth, were too close together to be
fired from a single gun. What's more, he identified eight
shots from a single twenty two caliber pistol firing in
(25:31):
one direction and five shots from another twenty two firing
in the opposite direction. Those findings are consistent with what
I think is a fair reading of the physical evidence
at the crime scene. Hello, Phil, good, How are you
(25:53):
feel good to get out of New York? Yeah? You
could do it all right? Za. I thought Van prague
discoveries would make for a good episode, so Zach and
I went out to see him in Arizona, Oh I've
kind of been into the study of audio for well,
since I was a little kid. Actually, Van Prag was
personable and a little geeky in a way I found endearing.
(26:14):
But when we walked into the studio behind his house,
we discovered that his actual workstation was just a small
space in what otherwise was a literal museum of recorded
sounds that various reel to reel recorders, mostly two channel,
four channel, various amplifiers, and those two guys are from
nineteen forty one Zenith Transoceanic Radio. It was dazzled hundreds
(26:38):
of old recording devices from Edison on forward, old console
radios that families used to gather around, and the best
collection of vinyl records that I'd ever seen. As you know,
my favorite item was a glowing red jukebox that still
worked with forty fives from the likes of Little Richard
and Jerry Lee Lewis. On the wall near the jukebox
(26:58):
was an old framed black and white photo of a
guy on stage playing a guitar. His hair was swept
back in the style of the day, and I thought
I recognized him was a Buddy Holly Dwayne Eddy. Turns
out it was a young Phil van Praggue, looking really cool,
like he was one of those guys who went around
with a cigarette pack rolled in his sleeve. I was
(27:21):
never that here. Now, after our tour, we sat with
Phil and he told us how he had done his work.
I thought her conversation went well, but driving back to
the airport, I discovered that Zach had a different opinion.
We had a rather animated argument in the car, and
(27:42):
Zach presented his negative view of Van Praggue's findings in
the final episode. Well, I don't have the technical expertise
to give you an informed opinion on trailing edge waveforms
or frequency domain spectrums. I could see the care and
attention Van Praggue brought to these that I did understand,
and I easily imagined that he took the same care
(28:04):
with the more technical things that were beyond me. You
can see it for yourself in a Discovery Times documentary.
He was featured in Just Search conspiracy test the rfk
Assassination on YouTube. Then there was Van Pragge himself. He
was a man who had devoted his life to the
science of recorded sound, as evidenced by all the artifacts
(28:26):
that had surrounded us in his workplace. He had been
asked to apply this science to an old audio tape
to help answer questions about a tragic historical event. I
can't imagine that this man would betray himself and his
science to perpetrate a lie. And why would he do it?
If Van Pragge had examined the Prazynski tape and had
(28:48):
found just eight shots, he would have said that he
found eight shots. There's one final topic I'd like to explore.
The people who sauce her hand with someone else. The
knight of the assassination, I was standing there just thinking,
you know, thinking about how many people there were and
(29:09):
how wonderful it was. Then this girl came running down
the stairs in the back, came running down the stairs
and said, we've shot him. We've shot him. And I says,
who did you shoot? And she says, we shot Senator Kennedy.
A boy came down. This, of course is Sandra Serrano.
She's the Kennedy campaign worker who had a strange conversation
(29:30):
with a woman right after Robert Kennedy had been shot
by itself. The conversation wasn't all that important. Serrano might
have misunderstood or misheard the woman, and she would have
been comfortably buried in the black hole of the LPD
files if she hadn't told her story on TV. But
she did so she had to be handled. Please, I
(29:54):
love this man. I understanding here. You can heat it
right an he can't even well. I'm trying not to show,
but this is a very emotional thing. This is Sergeant
Hank Hernandez questioning Serrano. If you locome mac at least
you owe him. At least you owe him is a
courtesy of letting him rest in peace. And he can't rest.
It's a versorous anything interesting. And I don't want to
(30:16):
go out here and tell these people. I would just
rather you tell me and we keep about here and say,
in all, cancel a report. I can do this. I
have the authority to cancel a report or what do
you need? But the only one I can do is
by you talking the truth. But it's the only one
people who is There's a truth to tell. There's a
truth to tell, and I want to try to do
whatever I believe is best for you. It's very easily
(30:39):
to redeem, but it isn't easy to redeem something that's
a deep wound that will grow with you like a
disease like cancer. At this point, Serrano has already endured
two weeks of harsh treatment from the police, during which
she lost her job, and it's obvious that the police
don't want to hear what she has to say. Hernandez
is essentially telling Serrano that he will continue to make
(31:01):
her life holy hell unless she changes her story. So,
after an hour of bullying, Serrano gives in. In my opinion,
Hernandez has taken good evidence hers and replace it with
phony evidence his, and if this is true, then he
has committed a serious crime. The day after Serrano finally
(31:22):
gives in, the Los Angeles Police hold a press conference
and claim that the PoCA Doot woman never existed, that
she was the fabrication of one overwrought Kennedy campaign worker.
This is a huge lie. The truth was that between
the police and the FBI, there were several dozen reports
of this woman. Jack Merritt, a security guard, saw two
(31:45):
men and a woman in a pokadot dress run from
the pantry. Ralph Williams was outside the pantry, saw a
girl running out saying we got him, we got him.
George Greene saw a girl in a pokodot dress run
from the pantry. Doctor Marcus mc room saw a man
with a gun and a girl in a polka dot
dress leave the pantry, the girl shouting, we got him.
(32:06):
Irene Gizzie Kennedy volunteer noticed a girl in a polka
dot dress with two Latin looking men. Lonnie Worthy, Margaret Haunt,
Judith Groves, Katie Kerr, Susan Locke, Richard Houston, Booker Griffin
all reported seeing this woman, and the list goes on.
The most consequential witness who saw the girl in the
(32:26):
poka dot dress was an Ambassador hotel waiter, Vincent de Piero.
I don't have time to get into his whole saga today,
but you'll hear all about it in next week's episode.
When I first met my shadow Play co author, Professor
Philip Malanson, he had already spent several years combing through
(32:48):
the newly opened police files. When it came to all
these witnesses, he discovered a shocking pattern. The police didn't
collate these reports and searched them for clues. Instead, they
did everything they could to discredit them, scatter them, hide them,
alter them, and lie about them. We wrote a whole
chapter on it, and of course no one could know
(33:09):
what the police said about what they saw. After all,
for twenty years the files were kept secret. It's not
the job of the police to tell witnesses what they saw.
If they try to force witnesses to change their stories,
(33:30):
it's not incompetence. It's a crime. If they secretly alter
their stories, it's not bungling, it's a crime. And if
they destroy evidence, it's not boys being boys are looking
out for your buddy, it's a crime. The work product
of the police belongs to the people they work for.
It is not theirs to keep secret. But keeping things
(33:53):
secret is how crimes like this can happen. Consider all
the police officers with bullet evidence who had no idea
that what they saw meant a second gun was firing,
and for the rest of it listened to former LA
cop Danny Jensen got a court order within a day
or two that we were not allowed to talk to
(34:13):
anybody about it. We weren't allowed to discuss it with
anyone of any of the events witnessed that night. We
were to give no statements to the press. And that
was my first and last. It never happened before that
was it. They kept everything very confidential, throwing a bunch
of people like me talking about a second gun and
(34:33):
too many bullet holes, and you know things of that nature,
do they? There was a real siege mentality of that
police department. It was us and the rescue assholes, and
we took care of each other, and and we didn't
make mistakes. If we did, we buried him. The lines
(34:57):
that the police were willing to tell are our windows
into the crime. One might guess or draw inferences as
to who was behind the murder, but the evidence really
doesn't show us that. And while I might think the
most likely explanation for Sir Hann's lack of motive or
memory is that his mind was manipulated, I don't know
(35:18):
that as a fact, But looking at the evidence, I
believe to a virtual certainty that another gun was firing,
that other people were involved in that the police lied
about these things. All of this matters because Robert Kennedy
had powerful enemies. And if a man who is near
to becoming president is murdered, and the official account of
that murder is riddled with secrecy and lies, then what
(35:41):
can we fairly conclude about the country We're living in
Thanks for listening, Thanks for caring. For the RFK Tapes.
This is Bill Claybur reporting Crimetown is Zach Stewart Pontier
(36:08):
and Mark Smerling. The RFK Tapes is produced in partnership
with Cadence thirteen. For bonus content, check out our website
at RFK tapes dot com. This episode was produced by
me Ulakopa and Kevin Shephard. Our senior producer is Austin Mitchell.
(36:30):
Fact checking by James Williamson. This episode was mixed and
sound designed by Sam Baer. Music by Kenny Kusiak, additional
music by John Kusiak. Our title track is Maria Tambien
by Krumbin. Our credit track is from Box Guldberg Variations
played by Kimiko Ishizaka. Music supervision by Josh Kessler and
(36:57):
Dylan Bostick at Heavy Duty Projects. Archival footage courtesy of
the California State Archives. Archival research by Brennan Reese. Our
website is designed by Kurt Courtney. Special thanks to Gene Claybur,
Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Santoro, Paul Schreid, Aler Lowenstein, Phil Mlanson,
(37:21):
David Mendelssohn, Bill Pepper, Laurie Dusk, Shane O'Sullivan, Brad Johnson,
Phil Van Prague, Robert Kennedy Junior, and the team at
Cadence thirteen. If you want to see more of my
research into the Robert Kennedy assassination, you can pick up
shadow Play, the book I co wrote with Phil Mlanson
(37:41):
from Saint Martin's Press. If you like the show, please
consider leaving us a rating and a review on Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen. It really helps others find
out about the show. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook at the RFK Tapes. Thanks
Hey, everybody, Zach here today on the show, I'm taking
a back seat and I'm letting Bill take the wheel.
He's been working with the RFK Tapes team on this
episode with no input from me. By design, even though
we may disagree, I wanted Bill to get a chance
to say what he wanted to say in the way
that he wanted to say it. And so this is
his episode and it represents his views. I'll be back
(00:24):
next week with another new bonus. And I also wanted
to give you a heads up that Crimetown Season two
has just launched. The first two episodes are available right
now on Spotify. Thanks. So, when's the last time you
guys saw each other? I think it was when we
(00:45):
were visiting Sirhan. I think was the last time when
I both visit. It's your hand for the Fif's eight
in the evening and I'm on stage at the Billhouse
in Guanas, Brooklyn having a debate with journalist Dan Moldea
over who killed Robert Kennedy. It was when I was
still in the two Guns thing. Yeah, I know, I remember,
and I was Dan and I hadn't seen each other
(01:07):
since nineteen ninety four. Back then we were both writing
books on the case, and we both believed that a
second gun had fired the fatal bullets. But now Dan
thinks her hands acted alone. We solved the murder. I
solved the case because I showed how the police airs
led to people like us believing that there were two
(01:28):
guns in that room. Okay, so how do we So
Dan and I are on opposite sides of the case.
I think something much darker happened that night in the
pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, and today I'm going to
present some additional evidence that supports that belief. I'm Bill Claiber,
(01:50):
and this is the RFK tapes. The most important evidence
is that of extra bullets. So her hands gun could
hold only eight. You've heard it said by now. If
there were extra bullets in the pantry, then another gun
was firing. I'll start with the account of Robert Redrick,
(02:11):
a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He arrived at the
Ambassador the morning after the murder and went straight to
the kitchen. So I walked back. They're cold, and I
ran into an LA detective sergeant named MacArthur. He showed
me where the senator had come through the double doors
from the ballroom into the kitchen where he had stopped
(02:33):
and shaken hands with some of the help, and he said,
you see that piece of wood that was a piece
of molding about eight feet long. He said it had
come from the center partition of the two double doors
that led from the ballroom into the kitchen. I could
see where it had been taken off, and I was
lying on a low table, and he showed me the
(02:55):
two bullet holes in the thing, and you could see
where an Evidence Nation's probe that dug into the wood
to extract the two expended slugs. Other witnesses said they
had also seen bullet holes, including the corner hotel carpenters,
(03:16):
amateur photographers, and hotel waiters. And there were the accounts
of sixteen law enforcement officers, like some you heard in
episode eight. Patrolman Al Lamarreau told Moldea, I do recall
seeing one or two holes in the door around wherever
he had shot at him. It was just obvious, just
being a dumb cop. You look and see where the
(03:36):
bullets went. LAPD photographer Charles Collier told Moldea, a bullet
hole looks like a bullet hole if you photographed enough
it's Sergeant James R. MacArthur told Maldea that he had
seen quite a few bullets. Albin s Heggie said, I
know that there were some because they took out door.
Raymond M Roland told Maldea that during a tour of
the pantry, one of the investigators pointed to a hole
(03:58):
in the door frame and said, we just pulled a
bull it out of here. Police photographer Charles Collier also
described police detectives running strings from the holes in the
center divider back to where Sir Hann had fired his
shots to illustrate the bullet flight pass. It seems like
a strange thing to do. If the holes in the
doorframe were not indeed bullet holes, then there is what
(04:23):
Officer David Butler told Meldea. Butler had been in the
pantry working under criminalis Dwyane Wolfer, who would be responsible
for like taking like two bullets out of the wall
or so we are, are you? He took the two
bullet bottle the wall that night. Dwayne Wolfer took the
two bullets out of the wall. I know there was
some controversy that developed later. So then the bullets that
(04:43):
Wolfer took out of out of the wall. Would be
just the ones like in a center divider there? Yes,
were you there when he took Yes? Where did you
just tear it out? And then we've got vigits of
a more out? Would yeah, tear it out? Tear it out?
Did wedad to disassemble to find the bullets? Sure seems
like David Butler was there and Saul Wolfer recovered two bullets.
(05:06):
But David Butler would revise his story. You may have
heard it in episode nine where Butler meets with Muldea
again to tell him that he actually didn't see the
bullets being removed. But what Muldea wrote in his book
shows that it didn't think much of Butler's reversal quote.
Butler changed his story about having seen bullets removed from
(05:26):
the center divider after he finally realized that I was
accounting for more bullets than Sir Hans Gunn could hold. Hello,
mister baby there, mister baby, get another bullet hole. Witness
was FBI agent William Bailey. In nineteen seventy seven, Bailey
was contacted by the Los Angeles DA's office to go
(05:48):
over and alf of David he'd given the year before.
I want to talk to you about her. First, I
want to read this AFFI David two years honor about
June fifth, six, nineteen sixty eight, Hi William at Bailey
As in the preparation room the Ambassador Hotel, approximately four
to six hours after the attempt on Senator Robert F.
(06:09):
Kennedy's life, I for instancy several other agents noted at
least two small towerble bullet holes in the center post
on the two doors leading from the preparation room. There
was no question in any of our minds as to
the fact that they were bullet holes and were not
(06:29):
caused by food, cards or other equipment in the preparation room.
Recall that paragram you saw two holes in the senator
door jam that you they were not male holes, and
they appeared to be bullet holes, And that was based
upon your observation of this area. How about any of
(06:50):
the other I'm particularly fond of this conversation because it's
essentially two cops talking to each other with a shared respect.
Had Billy been a civilian, it might not have been
so friendly. Maybe he would have been invited to have
lunch with Hank Hernandez Burnett knew enough not to try
to convince Bailey that he didn't know what he was
looking at. But that's exactly what Dan Muldea tried to
(07:11):
do with the live show. When I brought up Bailey
as someone who had seen extra bullets, they were identified
as bullet holes by William Bailey, who Bailey has had
conflicting versions in this sort of the beginning. The first
person he went to was he went to his Visculiosi.
Visculiosi never mentioned He said that Bailey never mentioned a
(07:32):
word about the about the bullet holes. Yeah, so Bill
Bailey didn't know what he was talking about. Bailey did
not know what he was talking about. That. But in
his book, Muldea goes on about the great respect he
has for William Bailey. He says, Bailey's story about observing
bullet holes is near impossible to discredit. That didn't stop
him from trying to do it at the live show,
(07:54):
sliding around with oddly changing ideas. Bailey gave conflicting accounts.
Bailey never mentioned bullet holes to Buliosi, Bailey didn't know
what he was talking about. None of these assertions is true.
There's one more piece of bullet hole evidence that I'd
like to talk about. A photograph that shows two police
(08:15):
officers inspecting a hole in the pantry doorframe. We posted
it to our website after the live show. The two
officers in the photo are Sergeants Robert Rossie and Charles Wright.
Former Prosecutor Vincent Buliosi spoke to Rozsie in nineteen seventy five,
who told him he saw what he believed to be
(08:36):
a bullet in the hole. Buliosi then spoke to off
Sir Wright. Quote I told him that Sergeant Rosie had
informed me that he was pretty sure that a bullet
was removed from the hole. Sergeant Wright replied, there's no
pretty sure about it. It was definitely removed from the hole,
but I don't know who did it. Years later, Dan
(08:57):
Muldea found Officer Right and asked him, on a scale
of one to ten, how certain he was that there
was a bullet in that hole? As close to a
ten as I'd ever want to go without pulling it out,
answered Wright. If there is a bullet in that hole,
as both officers said, then there is without question a
(09:18):
second gun firing. Perhaps even more significant. Rosie and Rights
required written account of their activities the night of the
murder would appear to have been removed from the police
files and replaced by a third person account of their
movements that never mentions a bullet in the door frame.
This is a clue because if Rosie and Right's original
(09:39):
reports were taken and replaced by phony reports, it would
be a serious crime, and of course they wouldn't know
that had been done because the police files were kept secret.
As we heard in episode nine, Dan Muldea went to
see his editor after his interview with security guard Jean Caesar.
Moldea wanted to change the ending his book and say
(10:01):
that Sir Hann had acted alone, that there was no
second gun. His editor was fine with the change, so
long as something was done about those pesky extra bullets.
After all, you can't have extra bullets and only one gunman.
So Moldea said he would go back to take a
closer look. It's all very dramatic, you heard it. He
takes out a magnifying glass and looks at a photo
(10:23):
of bullet holes. He sees a badge number and wants
to know who was this criminalist? Who was this firearms expert.
Turns out the badge belonged to a man from the
Sheriff's office named Walter Q, who died the year before.
So Moldea says, he calls Cho's widow and asked, how
long was your husband a criminalist? Oh answers Vivian Tou.
(10:46):
My husband was not a criminalist. He was a motorcycle cop.
Moldea is stunned. Now it all comes clear all those
cops with extra bullet evidence had been fooled by this
motorcycle cop who drew circles on the wall. There was
no second come. But Muldea's reinvestigation is a big fairy tale,
a gimmick. Mouldea can get away with telling people this
(11:09):
story now because most people haven't read his book, but
I have. Here's the truth. Moldea didn't talk to Vivian
two in nineteen ninety four during his dramatic so called reinvestigation.
He talked to her in nineteen ninety when he was
starting to interview the cops who were at the Ambassador
Hotel that night. I'm sure Vivian tu told Moldea that
(11:30):
her husband was a motorcycle cop. But if missus Chew's
revelation greatly disturbed Moldea, there is no evidence of it
in his book or in his actions. After their conversation
on he charged doing great work getting police officers to
talk about what they saw that night, but when Mouldea
needed to make it all go away, he said that
(11:51):
all those police accounts of extra bullets couldn't be credible
because Walter CHU wrote a motorcycle. If you want to
believe that, go ahead. I don't, but I do believe
that Walter Q is a key to understanding the Robert
Kennedy murder. Let's follow it out. A little after he
(12:13):
talked to Chew's widow, Muldea got a hold of Cho's supervisor.
The supervisor said that he vaguely remembered that two had
found some bullet holes and that circling the holes with
his badge number was the way they did it. Back then.
Two would then have filed an evidence report, but there
is no evidence report from Walter two in the police files.
(12:34):
As a required part of their investigation, the LAPD conducted
interviews of all the officers from the Sheriff's office who
were at the hotel that night. Twenty three such interviews,
but there is no record of an interview with Walter Chu.
Beyond that, Walter Chu is not even on the LAPD's
(12:54):
supposedly comprehensive list of law enforcement officers who were at
the Ambassador Hotel, though his batch number is on the
wall in the room where Kennedy was murdered. Walter two's
evidence report may have described the bullet holes in embarrassing detail.
He may have refused to change his story when interviewed
by the l a p D. Didn't matter. They had
(13:16):
an easy way out. I believe they made him disappear.
And again they would be able to do this without
fear because no one, including Walter two, would be able
to see their files follow the lies. Early on, Moldea
had become convinced that security guard Jean Caesar was the
(13:39):
one who put the bullets into Robert Kennedy's back. All
the evidence seemed to point that way, But when Mouldea
finally caught up with Caesar, he just didn't act guilty
or sound guilty. And then Caesar took and passed a
polygraph test, so Dan didn't know what to think. I
kept reminding him that the work he had already done
and published pretty much proved that a second gun was firing,
(14:02):
and that didn't change just because he thought Caesar wasn't
the guy who fired those shots. You start with the
near certainty of extra bullets in the room and a
second gun firing that I don't have any doubt enough, Okay,
But if you start there, you have an investigation that
you can't rely on, and you have extra bullets, and
you have bullets coming from a separate direction, and you
have a guy who can't explain himself and appears to
(14:24):
be sincere, And you can say the same thing about Caesar. Well,
you know, you know, you made a convincing case for Caesar,
and you know, I've got to say a former form
that he did it or for him that he did
that he didn't in terms of how his personality is now.
And that's always been a puzzle for me. Even in
(14:45):
the nineteen seventy three documentary The Second Gun, where Caesar
talks about hating Kennedy, he seems unself conscious, not careful
with his words, as one who was guilty might be.
That was a problem for me. On the other hand,
there was a story of Don Shulman, who the knight
of the assassination, gave a breathless account of the murder,
(15:06):
and said quite clearly that he saw the security guard
fire his gun. I'm talking to Don Shulman. Don, can
you give us a halfway detailed report on what happened
within all this chaos? Okay, I was standing behind Kennedy
as he was taking his assigned route into the kitchen.
A Caucasian gentleman stepped out and fired three times. The
security guard hit Kennedy all three times, so Kennedy slunk
(15:28):
to the floor. As they carried him away, the security
guards fired back, right, I heard about six or seven
shots in succession. Now is listening security guard firing back? Yes?
The man who was stepped out fired three times at Kennedy,
hit him all three times, and the security guards then
fired back. The standard argument against Caesar being the guy
(15:52):
who shot Kennedy was that Caesar was supposedly carrying a
thirty eight caliber pistol, while the bullets and Kennedy's back
were from a twenty two. But Caesar did own a
twenty two, and although he was interviewed the night of
the murder, there is no record of anyone inspecting his
gun to see what caliber it was or if it
had been fired. But maybe someone did. And the next
(16:15):
night at roll call, I remember, this is just a
bunch of cops sitting around talking, and that's when the
discussion came up of the second gun. And in Zach's
interview with Officer Daniel Jensen, Jensen said that he heard
other cops talking about extra bullets and about a security
guard who had carried a twenty two. I don't remember exactly,
like they found like one or two many bullet holes.
(16:39):
The guy had a twenty two and it was a
seven shot or nine shot, but there were two many
bullet holes. Sir Hans gun held eight shots, and so
that means that I think then the thief had eight.
Then they found ten the way I recall the two,
there were two too many bullet holes. But you remember,
I'm hearing all this stuff locker talk, and one of
(17:01):
the other officers had noted that the security guard had
a twenty two, which is an unusual gun to carry,
and the cops started speculating, you know what, I bet
he capped at some rounds. This is an extraordinary conversation.
Of course, it's not proof of anything. It's just, as
Jensen says, locker room talk. But if this is true,
(17:22):
it greatly strengthens the case against Caesar, and if Caesar
did it, I can't tell you why he sounds innocent.
Some people are just wired that way, or maybe someone
messed with his mind. The evidence of a second gun
is not limited to extra bullets in the door frames
(17:45):
or the suspicions around Jean Caesar. There are wounds in
Robert Kennedy that are seriously inconsistent with his physician relative
to Sir hand. According to the autopsy, the four bullets
that struck Kennedy were all fired from an inch or
two away. Three of them were fired at a steep
upward angle. Most reliable witnesses put Sir Hans's gun in
(18:06):
front of Kennedy and a foot and a half to
three feet away when the shooting started. It is possible
that Kennedy turned at the last moment, and it is
possible that Sir Hann lunged, closing the distance to create
a contact shot. But given the existing evidence, I believe
it's near impossible for Sir Hann to get four shots
(18:27):
into Kennedy's back at contact range and at a steep
upward angle. Major D. Carl Ucher has said repeatedly that
he grabs her hands wrist after the first two shots,
then wristled him down to the steam table, where Sir
Hann began to fire again. Nine other witnesses said they
pretty much heard the same thing. Two shots, a pause,
(18:49):
and then a volley of shots. If all that's true,
where in that sequence can Sir Hann fire four shots
into the back of Kennedy at a steep upward angle.
This one goes right by the police. So I want
to credit Dan Moldea for recognizing this problem and trying
to deal with it. I just don't agree with how
he solves it. It's a very small area. Everyone was
(19:10):
pushing forward forward four Kennedy was pushed up against the
steam table sere he had had a clear opportunity to
get him four times at For Dan's steam table theory
to work, Kennedy would now have to be on his knees,
facing away from the table, but with his head pressed
up against it. That would be a memorable image, and
(19:33):
nobody saw that. Nobody saw anything like that, And if
Kennedy had taken a shot to the head in that position,
he would have likely been found face down in front
of the steam table and not on his back ten
feet away. What's more, at times the LAPD's accounting of
shots defies what you learned in high school physics. They
(19:54):
said that the bullet that went through Kennedy's jacket and
appeared to be heading for the ceiling was the same
one that ended up in Pulchrayd's head. Of course, bullets
don't change direction mid flight, but no one worried about
that because the important thing was that each wounded person
now had a bullet, and all eight bullets had been
accounted for, so everything's fine, right, Well not quite. There
(20:18):
are two more bullet holes in the ceiling. So some
one comes up with the idea that maybe Sir Hann
fired a bullet that went through the ceiling tile, bounced
off the cement floor above, came back through another ceiling tile,
and hit bystander Elizabeth Evans in the head, and to
this day that is the official explanation. Is it totally impossible? No,
(20:41):
But in my opinion it is highly unlikely. For one thing,
a soft, hollow point bullet bouncing off cement would most
likely shatter or be grossly deformed. But the bullet in
Elizabeth Evans's head was mostly intact in her medical report
said the bullet that struck her was traveling slightly upward.
No matter, the police go with a triple duty bullet
(21:04):
and it flies because nobody's asking questions. So the police
are unable to recreate the murder without magic tricks, and
the best that can be done fifty years later by
someone supporting the police version is a crime scene ballet
that I can't believe. It's a jungle, a tangled mess.
(21:24):
Can anyone make sense out of it? Someone did. In
nineteen seventy, a private criminalist named William Harper was asked
to examine the ballistics in the Kennedy murder. He looked
at the evidence and wrote a report saying the bullet
pathways showed two distinct firing positions. Position A was her
(21:44):
hand firing horizontally east to west, and position B was
a person behind Kennedy firing a gun upward into his back.
No magic ricochets, no bullets changing course in flight, nobody
fooled by a motorcycle cop. If we wanted to prove
Harper's report, we would just need to take a look
at the doorframes. But we can't because in nineteen sixty nine,
(22:08):
just a few weeks after a newspaper article made the
first public suggestion that police had recovered more bullets since
her hand could have fired, the LAPD secretly destroyed the
doorframes and the ceiling tiles. Think real hard, why would
they do that? Okay, let's take a break. When we
(22:36):
come back, we'll get into the new audio evidence and
why I believe Phil Van Prague. In two thousand and five,
Brett Johnson, a senior writer at CNN, contacted Phil Van Prague,
an accomplished sound engineer who had written a book on
(22:56):
recording technology. Johnson asked and Prague to listen to an
obscure audio tape that he had found in the California
State Archives. The tape had been made on a cassette
recorder that belonged to journalist Stanislav Prasinski. Prasynski had taped
Robert Kennedy's victory speech and then followed the senator into
(23:17):
the pantry, not realizing that hiss recorder was still on.
You heard this recording and episode ten, I'll play it
again for you now. Sometime after the murder, the FBI
had reviewed the tape and declared it utterly worthless, just
(23:41):
noise and That's pretty much what Van Prague thought the
first time he heard it, but he agreed to look further.
Van Prague knew that the cassette tape produced by the
Calarchives was a low quality copy, so he asked to
make a better copy of the real to real version
of their tape. They read, but gave him just one pass.
(24:02):
Van Pragge recorded that pass on to five different machines,
analog and digital, to get as much perspective as he could.
Then Van Pragge looked at news footage of the night
to find out exactly where Prazynski was when the shooting started,
how he was moving, what kind of recorder he was using.
After that, he recorded the firing of a twenty two
caliber pistol under a variety of noisy circumstances to see
(24:26):
how the sound might register on the primitive recorder Prazynski
had carried. Then the hard work began, using new computer
technology to tease gunshot sounds out of the noise of
the tape. He worked on this for two years. On
February twenty first, two thousand and eight, Phil van Pragge
stepped to the Dask and presented his findings to the
(24:48):
Academy of Forensic Sciences at their annual conference in Washington.
This will not be on the quiz, but I'll tell
you the title of the paper he presented, which was
Acoustic analysis of gunshot recordings utilizing frequency selective Integrated Loudness
Envelope evaluation. Van Prague explained what he did, how he
(25:08):
did it, and how this work had uncovered thirteen shot
sounds in the pantry when Kennedy was murdered. He located
these shot sounds to a thousandth of a second and
showed how two shot pairings, the third and fourth and
the seventh and eighth, were too close together to be
fired from a single gun. What's more, he identified eight
shots from a single twenty two caliber pistol firing in
(25:31):
one direction and five shots from another twenty two firing
in the opposite direction. Those findings are consistent with what
I think is a fair reading of the physical evidence
at the crime scene. Hello, Phil, good, How are you
(25:53):
feel good to get out of New York? Yeah? You
could do it all right? Za. I thought Van prague
discoveries would make for a good episode, so Zach and
I went out to see him in Arizona, Oh I've
kind of been into the study of audio for well,
since I was a little kid. Actually, Van Prag was
personable and a little geeky in a way I found endearing.
(26:14):
But when we walked into the studio behind his house,
we discovered that his actual workstation was just a small
space in what otherwise was a literal museum of recorded
sounds that various reel to reel recorders, mostly two channel,
four channel, various amplifiers, and those two guys are from
nineteen forty one Zenith Transoceanic Radio. It was dazzled hundreds
(26:38):
of old recording devices from Edison on forward, old console
radios that families used to gather around, and the best
collection of vinyl records that I'd ever seen. As you know,
my favorite item was a glowing red jukebox that still
worked with forty fives from the likes of Little Richard
and Jerry Lee Lewis. On the wall near the jukebox
(26:58):
was an old framed black and white photo of a
guy on stage playing a guitar. His hair was swept
back in the style of the day, and I thought
I recognized him was a Buddy Holly Dwayne Eddy. Turns
out it was a young Phil van Praggue, looking really cool,
like he was one of those guys who went around
with a cigarette pack rolled in his sleeve. I was
(27:21):
never that here. Now, after our tour, we sat with
Phil and he told us how he had done his work.
I thought her conversation went well, but driving back to
the airport, I discovered that Zach had a different opinion.
We had a rather animated argument in the car, and
(27:42):
Zach presented his negative view of Van Praggue's findings in
the final episode. Well, I don't have the technical expertise
to give you an informed opinion on trailing edge waveforms
or frequency domain spectrums. I could see the care and
attention Van Praggue brought to these that I did understand,
and I easily imagined that he took the same care
(28:04):
with the more technical things that were beyond me. You
can see it for yourself in a Discovery Times documentary.
He was featured in Just Search conspiracy test the rfk
Assassination on YouTube. Then there was Van Pragge himself. He
was a man who had devoted his life to the
science of recorded sound, as evidenced by all the artifacts
(28:26):
that had surrounded us in his workplace. He had been
asked to apply this science to an old audio tape
to help answer questions about a tragic historical event. I
can't imagine that this man would betray himself and his
science to perpetrate a lie. And why would he do it?
If Van Pragge had examined the Prazynski tape and had
(28:48):
found just eight shots, he would have said that he
found eight shots. There's one final topic I'd like to explore.
The people who sauce her hand with someone else. The
knight of the assassination, I was standing there just thinking,
you know, thinking about how many people there were and
(29:09):
how wonderful it was. Then this girl came running down
the stairs in the back, came running down the stairs
and said, we've shot him. We've shot him. And I says,
who did you shoot? And she says, we shot Senator Kennedy.
A boy came down. This, of course is Sandra Serrano.
She's the Kennedy campaign worker who had a strange conversation
(29:30):
with a woman right after Robert Kennedy had been shot
by itself. The conversation wasn't all that important. Serrano might
have misunderstood or misheard the woman, and she would have
been comfortably buried in the black hole of the LPD
files if she hadn't told her story on TV. But
she did so she had to be handled. Please, I
(29:54):
love this man. I understanding here. You can heat it
right an he can't even well. I'm trying not to show,
but this is a very emotional thing. This is Sergeant
Hank Hernandez questioning Serrano. If you locome mac at least
you owe him. At least you owe him is a
courtesy of letting him rest in peace. And he can't rest.
It's a versorous anything interesting. And I don't want to
(30:16):
go out here and tell these people. I would just
rather you tell me and we keep about here and say,
in all, cancel a report. I can do this. I
have the authority to cancel a report or what do
you need? But the only one I can do is
by you talking the truth. But it's the only one
people who is There's a truth to tell. There's a
truth to tell, and I want to try to do
whatever I believe is best for you. It's very easily
(30:39):
to redeem, but it isn't easy to redeem something that's
a deep wound that will grow with you like a
disease like cancer. At this point, Serrano has already endured
two weeks of harsh treatment from the police, during which
she lost her job, and it's obvious that the police
don't want to hear what she has to say. Hernandez
is essentially telling Serrano that he will continue to make
(31:01):
her life holy hell unless she changes her story. So,
after an hour of bullying, Serrano gives in. In my opinion,
Hernandez has taken good evidence hers and replace it with
phony evidence his, and if this is true, then he
has committed a serious crime. The day after Serrano finally
(31:22):
gives in, the Los Angeles Police hold a press conference
and claim that the PoCA Doot woman never existed, that
she was the fabrication of one overwrought Kennedy campaign worker.
This is a huge lie. The truth was that between
the police and the FBI, there were several dozen reports
of this woman. Jack Merritt, a security guard, saw two
(31:45):
men and a woman in a pokadot dress run from
the pantry. Ralph Williams was outside the pantry, saw a
girl running out saying we got him, we got him.
George Greene saw a girl in a pokodot dress run
from the pantry. Doctor Marcus mc room saw a man
with a gun and a girl in a polka dot
dress leave the pantry, the girl shouting, we got him.
(32:06):
Irene Gizzie Kennedy volunteer noticed a girl in a polka
dot dress with two Latin looking men. Lonnie Worthy, Margaret Haunt,
Judith Groves, Katie Kerr, Susan Locke, Richard Houston, Booker Griffin
all reported seeing this woman, and the list goes on.
The most consequential witness who saw the girl in the
(32:26):
poka dot dress was an Ambassador hotel waiter, Vincent de Piero.
I don't have time to get into his whole saga today,
but you'll hear all about it in next week's episode.
When I first met my shadow Play co author, Professor
Philip Malanson, he had already spent several years combing through
(32:48):
the newly opened police files. When it came to all
these witnesses, he discovered a shocking pattern. The police didn't
collate these reports and searched them for clues. Instead, they
did everything they could to discredit them, scatter them, hide them,
alter them, and lie about them. We wrote a whole
chapter on it, and of course no one could know
(33:09):
what the police said about what they saw. After all,
for twenty years the files were kept secret. It's not
the job of the police to tell witnesses what they saw.
If they try to force witnesses to change their stories,
(33:30):
it's not incompetence. It's a crime. If they secretly alter
their stories, it's not bungling, it's a crime. And if
they destroy evidence, it's not boys being boys are looking
out for your buddy, it's a crime. The work product
of the police belongs to the people they work for.
It is not theirs to keep secret. But keeping things
(33:53):
secret is how crimes like this can happen. Consider all
the police officers with bullet evidence who had no idea
that what they saw meant a second gun was firing,
and for the rest of it listened to former LA
cop Danny Jensen got a court order within a day
or two that we were not allowed to talk to
(34:13):
anybody about it. We weren't allowed to discuss it with
anyone of any of the events witnessed that night. We
were to give no statements to the press. And that
was my first and last. It never happened before that
was it. They kept everything very confidential, throwing a bunch
of people like me talking about a second gun and
(34:33):
too many bullet holes, and you know things of that nature,
do they? There was a real siege mentality of that
police department. It was us and the rescue assholes, and
we took care of each other, and and we didn't
make mistakes. If we did, we buried him. The lines
(34:57):
that the police were willing to tell are our windows
into the crime. One might guess or draw inferences as
to who was behind the murder, but the evidence really
doesn't show us that. And while I might think the
most likely explanation for Sir Hann's lack of motive or
memory is that his mind was manipulated, I don't know
(35:18):
that as a fact, But looking at the evidence, I
believe to a virtual certainty that another gun was firing,
that other people were involved in that the police lied
about these things. All of this matters because Robert Kennedy
had powerful enemies. And if a man who is near
to becoming president is murdered, and the official account of
that murder is riddled with secrecy and lies, then what
(35:41):
can we fairly conclude about the country We're living in
Thanks for listening, Thanks for caring. For the RFK Tapes.
This is Bill Claybur reporting Crimetown is Zach Stewart Pontier
(36:08):
and Mark Smerling. The RFK Tapes is produced in partnership
with Cadence thirteen. For bonus content, check out our website
at RFK tapes dot com. This episode was produced by
me Ulakopa and Kevin Shephard. Our senior producer is Austin Mitchell.
(36:30):
Fact checking by James Williamson. This episode was mixed and
sound designed by Sam Baer. Music by Kenny Kusiak, additional
music by John Kusiak. Our title track is Maria Tambien
by Krumbin. Our credit track is from Box Guldberg Variations
played by Kimiko Ishizaka. Music supervision by Josh Kessler and
(36:57):
Dylan Bostick at Heavy Duty Projects. Archival footage courtesy of
the California State Archives. Archival research by Brennan Reese. Our
website is designed by Kurt Courtney. Special thanks to Gene Claybur,
Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Santoro, Paul Schreid, Aler Lowenstein, Phil Mlanson,
(37:21):
David Mendelssohn, Bill Pepper, Laurie Dusk, Shane O'Sullivan, Brad Johnson,
Phil Van Prague, Robert Kennedy Junior, and the team at
Cadence thirteen. If you want to see more of my
research into the Robert Kennedy assassination, you can pick up
shadow Play, the book I co wrote with Phil Mlanson
(37:41):
from Saint Martin's Press. If you like the show, please
consider leaving us a rating and a review on Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen. It really helps others find
out about the show. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook at the RFK Tapes. Thanks
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