[BONUS] Loose Ends

After a few months away from the RFK case, Zac sits down with producer Jesse Rudoy to discuss some loose ends. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Then what's that blue thing? Hello? That should be headphones?
Do you hear anything? Now? Hello? There, My name is Jesse.
I'm one of the producers here on the RFK tapes.
As you could probably hear, we've spent a little bit
of time away from the studio. Oh wait, there we go.

(00:21):
Now now now I'm here, Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, But
we're back getting reacquainted with it. And that's because we've
got a very cool new project on the horizon, which
we will tell you about soon. But recently, Zach and
I were packing up a lot of our RFK tapes
and books and we just got to talking about the
case as we always would. Today on the show, Jesse

(00:45):
and I take a deep dive back into the RK
case to tie up some of the loose ends that
we've gotten some questions about. But a word of warning,
I'd recommend listening to the show before this episode because
I'm not sure much of this will make sense. We're
going to talk through the Rosicrucians, the girl in the

(01:06):
polka dot dress, and of course extra bullets. How's it going, man?
Very good. It's a been a while. It's been a while.

(01:27):
I spent some time away from this. How was it
to clear your mind of the RFK. I've well, you
go first. How has it been not to be thinking
about this? Yeah? It was good. I think it felt
healthy not to think about this. Not that I was
consciously purging it from my mind, but definitely leaving it behind,
which is not the easiest thing to do. And did

(01:50):
you leave it behind or no? Uh? Yeah, I mean
it's a funny thing, right. I just think when you
when you finish anything, is this experience of going from
like the possibilities of what it might have been in
all the excitement and all that stuff, and then the
reality of what it became. You know, when we started,

(02:11):
I didn't know how it was going to end. I
didn't know what the what we were going to find,
and I didn't know anything about this story. So there's
this whole excitement to learning all this information that is
really quite shocking. The autopsy doesn't match the witness testimony.

(02:33):
You know, there's evidence of too many bullets, and the
LAPD destroyed a bunch of evidence. I mean, there's a
way to look at this case where you really come
away thinking there was a massive conspiracy that here, you know,
and then Gradually for me, that stuff sort of faded away.
The more I've learned beyond that, I sort of started

(02:53):
to think, maybe that is as simple as they're saying. Yeah,
it's not really conversation starter, like what do you know
about the RFK case? Oh, that didn't this guy Sirhan
Sirhan do it? Yeah, that's it, Which was not the
conversation I was having with family and friends at the

(03:15):
beginning of this when I said that I was working
on a project about the RFK assassination. Obviously it was
you know, saying, well, do you know about this? You
know about these extra bullism, you know about the hypnosis,
and you know, open your eye and look at Cannady.
Open your eyes and look at Cannady. It's still shocking.

(03:37):
I mean, the parts of the case that are still shocking. Yeah,
regardless of what you believe in terms of conspiracy theory
related stuff or not, it is a fact that sir
Han Sirhan was hypnotized in his jail cell by these
psychiatrists on tape tape, and it's on tape. Look at

(04:00):
Canadate and it's some of the weirdest stuff you've ever
heard in your life. Are they chokey you, sir I
am Now I'll count the three and you wake up.

(04:28):
But remember at all you understand, Sirhan, Sirhan, do you understand?
H Can you hear doctor Pollard talking to you? And
the fact that he writes the Rosa Crucians when he's
under hypnosis. Remember he writes a m O rc uh

(04:48):
That blew my mind. Do you know what I want? Yeah?
You do. I don't want to lean to Roger you
and more. You know, I remember when I first heard that,
and it's like, holy shit, did the Rosa Crucians like
hypno program? Sirhan, Sirhan? Are they this like evil force,

(05:15):
this evil secret society. But then when we spoke to
Jesse Walker, that conspiracy theory sort of expert, this this
researcher author who's written and studied a bunch of conspiracy
theories throughout American history. And when I was looking at

(05:35):
his book, Rosa Crucians are all over it. Tell me
about the Rosa Crucians. They come up in this in
our story. So I was surprised. But they're actually a
force for good. People always think of conspiracies as up
to something evil, right, But there is this long tradition
also of thinking about um some sort of secret society

(05:57):
or other sort of force, you know, and Jellia or
extraterrestrial that's working behind the scenes to help humanity, and
so the Rosicrucians have generally been inserted into that role.
You may now open your eyes, but the original Rosicrucian
society was almost certainly a hoax. People were producing these

(06:21):
pamphlets about what they would like human society to aspire to.
There was not actually some sort of society. But it's
just interesting how something that was generated in this completely
different cultural context has been regularly adapted in America. So

(06:42):
then it's like, well, we're the Rosicrucians the way that
the CIA found their Manchurian candidate. That's then the question
that's the leap that some people go to. I don't
believe that. I think that the Rosicrucians were kind of
just a group of people selling self help shit. I
don't say that they had anything to do with the
murder of Kennedy. And we have to we also have

(07:04):
to square this with the John Fahey story. How do
you feel about the Fahey story, because that's I would
say that was one of the most shocking crazy tapes
for me was to hear him. Yeah, yeah, so John
Faye he was that salesman who ran into a girl
the morning of rfk's assassination. He sounds very reliable and

(07:26):
he mentions this woman at the Ambassador talking about getting Kennedy.
She came back and bobs to come from the wanting
that night I would see Ken and he also seemingly
totally organically brings up she was talking about this Rossa
Crucian stuff, and for me, I was like a Crucian.

(07:50):
I saw him at the saction. Yeah. I think John
Fahey did meet a girl. Um, maybe she even told
him that they were going to knock off Kennedy that night.
I don't believe that she was talking about Rosa crucians Um.
I think he got that from Fernando Faua, a journalist,

(08:10):
and if you pull out the tape, he actually mentioned
a different organization. First I thought of it something that
I was like, I thought ru and then he says,
through Fernando, I thought of Rosa Crucians man. We have
found out that, and I remember what she had said,
Rosa Crucian. I saw him in the nation, so I

(08:31):
kind of think it was confirmation bias. Um, there's certain
things about it his description that doesn't match. Who knows.
I don't think we'll ever be able to know, but
I have I think that's reason to suspect that he
might have been mistaken. Okay, so maybe maybe Fay he
was mistaken. But I'm curious what you think more generally

(08:52):
about the whole girl in the polka dot dress, the
famous girl in the book about dress, very famous, notably
seen by Sandra Serrano, the RFK campaign worker. This, a
girl came running down the stairs in the back, came
running down the stairs and says, we've shot him. We've
shot him. And I says, who did you shoot? And

(09:13):
she says, we've shot Senator Kennedy shad on a white
dress with poke it up. I believe that Sandra Serrano
is telling the truth, and I believe that she she
saw some version of what she says she saw. Um,
And I think what the police did to her is
pretty inexcusable, just in the way, like how how to

(09:36):
treat a witness. You can't see it, you can see him,
all your fear to him showing this. It's not accurate
to say that the cops didn't take the sighting of
the girl in the poke about dress seriously. They did
take it seriously. Um. You can hear almost every cop

(10:00):
the night of the murder ask the witnesses a few things,
one of which is, did you anytime female and a
black and white dress? Female? Black tired in a white
dress with black polka dot. The experience of listening to

(10:23):
that and wondering what they're gonna say is like something else.
I mean, I remember when we get these tapes in
the California State Archives and you're like hearing the hiss
and in my mind it's like late at night and
dark and like you're hearing like what happened? You know?
Did you and did you see you? Because is real important?
Did you see your girl the pok dress? No? No, no,

(10:45):
I don't know. So there's only one witness that puts
her in the pantry. There's other people that are in
the kitchen at that time who sees her Han who
also should have seen her right. One of them is
Hayesus Perez, Jesus Perez bus boy who worked for the ambassador,

(11:06):
and in his tape he's very clear that he saw
Sir Han before the before the shooting. He says, Sir
Han was standing in the kitchen, he was talking with her.
He wasn't alone, and Jesus and Sir Han have an interaction.
Sir Han asks, say, Sus, is mister Kennedy coming through here?

(11:27):
I don't know? And Jesus says, I don't know him. Now,
he's the one, this guy that asked you he was
mister Kennedy gonna pass through here. He's the one that
ultimately had the gun in his hand and was Yeah,
he wasn't he wasn't good the shooting. Yeah, the cops
even try, like the clever stuff they do where it's like,

(11:48):
did I understand you say he was with a girl here? No? No,
I don't see no girl. So it's like the cops
might have had a reason to dismiss the siding of
the girl in the polka dot dress. Okay, so you
don't you don't believe there was a girl in the
polka dot dress. But I'm curious where you're thinking, is

(12:12):
that with the extra bullets, the must distance the security guard,
Oh yeah, the easy stuff. Curious where you're out with that,
Zach responds, after the break, you know, honestly, I was

(12:40):
thinking that Caesar could have been Caesar could have been
earlier in the season, like Seat. Maybe Caesar should have
come like around episode four or five, so that you
would have more of a picture of like a second gun,
you know, because we did the second gun theory without
a suspect, right, and there was a suspect. Yeah, And

(13:02):
I think Caesar having myself come into this case and
seeing other producers and people that worked on the show
come into this case than Caesar. For those who don't remember,
as the security guard who was standing directly behind RFK
at the time he was shot admittedly had a gun
on him and pulled it out in the moments after

(13:24):
Kennedy was shot. You know, you learn that the autopsy
about where the bullets entered Kennedy's body, and that there
were these powder burnons on the back of Kennedy's neck,
so it seemed like the gun that killed him had
to have been inches away and likely from behind, just

(13:46):
because of where the bullets entered. And then you find
out that a lot of eye witnesses don't really put
Sir Hunt that close. And then you come to find
out there's the security guard who was in by his
own admission was in that exact place. I was right
hind him all the way down to where the steam
table was. Now. At that time, I just hadn't look up,

(14:07):
and that's when I've seen. All I could see was
an arm and a gun, and I reached for mine.
Dane Caesar has been the primary suspect for the Second
Gunman since nineteen seventy two. I think when Ted Sharrock's
movie came out The Second Gun and Ended, a whole
bunch of suspicious stuff came out about Caesar. He was

(14:31):
one of the only witnesses who didn't testify at the trial.
At his request, Caesar was never asked to take the
witness stand. I told him, if it's all possible, justly
not be involved. And there was this whole thing about
what kind of gun Caesar had originally told the cops
that he had a thirty eight caliber gun the night

(14:51):
of the murder and that he didn't own a twenty two,
But then it came out later did Caesar own a
twenty two caliber gun the night of the assassin nation? Oh?
A month after that, I had a little twenty two
n R twenty two, just like the one that was
used on Bobby twenty two. No, I don't have the
twenty two anymore. He sold it. I sold it. There
was this whole question of when Caesar had sold has

(15:14):
actually sold his twenty two, and he lied about it. Yeah,
he lied about it in a way that's really suspicious.
He told the police that he had sold a twenty
twenty two before the shooting of Bobby Kenny, so he
didn't even own a twenty two at the time Bobby
Kennedy was shot. But then Ted Sharrock finds out that
he lied about this. Right, he sold his twenty two

(15:36):
a few months after the shooting. Right, it's a guy
named Jim Yoder. I tell me about this with set
on the day of September to show this is him
reading the receipt he got from Caesar, fifteen dollars from
Jim Yoder, but the item involved as an h R
twenty two tests saying and Yoder actually had like a

(15:59):
like a kind of a creepy story of an interaction
that he had had with Caesar when he bought the gun. Right, right,
And he told that too, And he told Sharrock that
that Caesar had said he had went to the aid
of an officer. This was the way it was told
to me. That he was driving home putting front. He
had served as shift as a guard, but he had
seen this officer in trouble and he went to his aid.

(16:22):
He made the statement something the fact that he had
he had fired shots. I presumed after the criminal that
they had cornered. It seems really incriminating and really and
really nefarious, like oh my god, this is it. But

(16:43):
then you have to put your take a step back
and think about how human behavior actually works. Let's say
this is a guy who accidentally shot RFK and knows
the accidentally STK. Right, he's not gonna say that. He's
not gonna he's not gonna say anything. He's not gonna
sell this gun to anyone. He's not gonna write a receipt,
and he's not going to be like be careful. You
know that gun is you know, toxic getting destroyed and

(17:05):
never mentioned again. Yeah, I mean that's basically what Caesar
says to him all daya when he brings it up
to him, which he does. Well, they will day asked
Caesar about this the LAPD interview. You had told them
that you had sold the gun to Yoder prior to
the murder, and it was after the murder, and it
and then and then and then they then it was

(17:25):
after the murder on September told him that next, Okay,
this is a copy of the receipt for for Yoder
that you signed. Now, the thing I can't understand is
if you killed Kennedy, why would you, you know, put
in writing, I mean, I would I would go out
if I killed somebody, I would take that gun in second.
I would. I would be, you know, chopping that gun
apart and throw it into the ocean. And here you

(17:48):
are selling it to a guy and leaving a receipt
for it and telling him where I sold it to
and where he lived. I am told him where he lived.
There's a lot of people believe this is a murder weapon. Good.
So Caesar did some suspicious stuff, but it didn't really
seem to me that like he was the second gunman.
It didn't seem like he was an assassin. He was

(18:10):
the security guard stationed in the pantry. And it just
so happened that rfk's route was changed after the speech.
He was supposed to go a different way, he didn't
go that way, and he turned back and went into
the pantry, and that's why Caesar was the guy to
lead him through the pantry. That and that decision to

(18:33):
change the route. That was always pretty interesting to me
because if it's a conspiracy, then that route change is
a nefarious thing. But that route change wasn't a nefarious thing.

(18:54):
Frederick Dutton was rfk's campaign manager, had worked for the
Kennedy's for years and years, and him and Bill Barry,
who was Kennedy's bodyguard, changed the room speaking and I
let me to look to see what would be the
route to take him from the stage to at next
There's one possibility it was going off to the right

(19:16):
of the stage. We decided to take him off the
left or back of the stage. And I speaking that
room through the all way shooting finally occurred. So it's like,

(19:37):
if this is a conspiracy and and and there's this
massive plan to kill Robert Kennedy in the kitchen pantry
of the Ambassador Hotel, it's just listening to Frederick Dutton
talk about it, it just feels so random that he
was even coming out that way. It doesn't so or

(19:59):
you have to believe that's how Frederick Dutton and Bill
Berry are in on it, or one of the two
of them are is in on it, and they deliberately,
maliciously changed the root. And so it's just these things
stacking on top of each other that as you learn
more and more, and as you get deeper and deeper,
the conspiracy theory gets harder and harder to believe. It

(20:28):
does get harder to believe. But but the thing that
you're always left with, no matter how much you look
into this is this extra bullet thing. Oh, the extra
bullet thing which is which is so hard to dismiss
or explain away. You know, the more you try to
explain away the extra bullets, the more you start sounding

(20:50):
like a conspiracy theorist yourself. And in a way, because
there's this picture we dealt with this an episode of
two police officers on the night of the shooting, standing
by this door jam in the kitchen pantry in the
Ambassador Hotel, pointing at what looks to clearly be circled
bullet holes circled as evidence. And of course if those

(21:14):
were in fact bullet holes, then there were more bullets fired,
then Sir Han had had in his eighth shot revolver
and I just I don't have any I don't know,
let's really say about say, I'm sort of like, you know,
I throw my hands up at this one because yeah, well,
on the one hand, I remember when we first got

(21:36):
into it, I thought maybe there was that Caesar had
accidentally fired or or or or Caesar had fired, and
that would explain some of the extra bullets, or another
gunman returning fire, not in a malicious way, not in
like somebody trying to assassinate Kennedy, but just somebody returning fire.
The issue is a little bit there behind Kennedy in

(21:58):
Sir Han's line of fire, as opposed to somebody that
would be shooting ats or Hanum, So, well, do you
really think the bullets or do you think there were
bullets in those holes? Are no? I I guess I
don't think there were bullets in those holes. UM, So
explain that it's really suspicious because, like we said, there

(22:21):
is a photograph of two seemingly bullet holes. There's an
FBI report that says there were bullet holes. So clearly
people thought there were bullet holes, were they right? I
hate to be facetious, but eventually, if I keep coming
up with bullets, the question is going to be not

(22:42):
how many guns were there, but who were the members
of the firing squad. There are extra extra bullets that
are also circled, and there are too many bullets even
for the second gun theory, so there's like something like
I don't know how many but bunch. So clearly some

(23:03):
of the bullets, some of those things that were identified
that night as bullets were not bullets, and so it's
possible to me that they cut the thing out of
the wall, got a debt back to the place and said,
you know, there aren't actually there aren't any bullets in here.
You see, there's no way to tell because the thing
has been destroyed. So is the destruction of the doorframe

(23:26):
proof that there were bullets in there? I think that's
what it comes down to. Is it proof? I don't
think so. This photograph, I'm not sure that's proof. And
you think that people will circling them were mistaken, Yeah,
you know, right now, that's what I think. Right. I

(23:52):
think a lot of listeners went on this journey with you,
and maybe this was a lot of new information, and
based on the stuff we presented said, actually, I do
believe something really, something really happened here, and maybe some
people might have felt duped or that you were saying
at the end that I actually don't listen to anything

(24:12):
we just said. But how do you? I mean, this
was the journey that I went on, you know, and
I looked at this case very carefully for a long time,
and you know, I saw a lot of evidence that
led me to think that there might be a conspiracy,
and then I saw a lot of evidence that kind

(24:33):
of convinced me there wasn't. And and that doesn't mean
that I don't I mean, I feel like I learned
a lot, But what I learned was more about kind
of how conspiracies can form and how powerful they are,
and why people believe what they believe. The real question

(24:57):
is how how easy is it to disprove a conspiracy theory,
because people can often find ways to keep believing something
they want to believe. Again, Jesse Walker, I think in
general for a conspiracy theory to disappear, what it has
to happen isn't so much it being disproven, as is

(25:17):
history moving on and people not caring as much. People
suddenly aren't as interested in why someone tried to kill
George Wallace. You know, people are still interested in Martin
Luther King obviously, although it's not as big as JFK.
And then Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X are a bit
lower down the chain. Malcolm X has the sort of

(25:39):
odd position where there was literally conspiracy, there were multiple gunmen,
so it's just a question of, you know, how big
a conspiracy was it. That's really what happens. It's on
a cultural level. It has less to do with things
being disproven so much as things being forgotten or shrugged at.

(26:14):
It sounds like if if we had this conversation on
a different day, you might have some different thoughts or
different ideas. I know I would. And ultimately what you
realize is that what Walker saying, He's like, yeah, you
never really do. We're never gonna We're never gonna prove
any of this stuff. Really no, It's very slippery and

(26:36):
proof is impossible, Like how what would be proof? You know?
I mean, so it's just sort of feels like grasping
its sand, you know, trying to prove any of this stuff.
Thanks Jesse, happy to be here, so psyched to tell

(26:56):
everybody about our new project, which we will be on
B soon. Yeah, pretty soon, coming early twenty nineteen new
new season of Crimetown presents It's not going to be
rf N's involved. No, Kennedy's involved. Crimetown is me Zack

(27:20):
Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling. The RFK Tapes is made
in partnership with Cadence thirteen. This episode was produced by
Jesse Rudoy and Kevin Shepherd. Our senior producer is Austin Mitchell,
editing by Mark Smirling. This episode was mixed by Sam Baar,
music by Kenny Qciak, additional music by John Qciak. Hey,

(27:44):
you released the score to the RFKA Tapes. It's available
on iTunes, Spotify, and basically anywhere you listen to music.
Check it out. Our title track is Maria Tambien by
Krumbin music supervision by Josh Kessler and Dylan Bostek at
Heavy Duty Projects. Archival footage courtesy of the California State Archives.

(28:07):
Archival research by Brennan Reese. Our website is designed by
Kurt Courtney. Thanks to Emily Wiedemann, Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Santro,
Bill Claibur and the team at Caden's thirteen. Hey, if
you like the RFKA Tapes, consider leaving us a rating
and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and

(28:29):
keep an eye on your feeds. We've got some cool
new stuff coming soon. Thanks