Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 6/1/1968 (Saturday) Sirhan spent two hours practicing at the Corona police shooting range. This afternoon, he buys two boxes of .22-caliber hollow-point bullets from the Lock, Stock and Barrel gun shop in San Gabriel, CA. Larry Arnot, the employee who sold Sirhan ammunition for the gun on June 1. Arnot worked at the Lock, Stock and Barrel and said that Sirhan had come in about 3 p.m with two other men. They were very serious, not talkative and left quickly after Sirhan bought two boxes of .22 caliber mini-mag hollow points. One of the other men had bought two boxes of Super-X Westerns and Arnot recorded the four boxes on one sales slip. He identified Sirhan Sirhan as the buyer and one of the young men with him as Munir Sirhan. He could not identify the third young man.
  
• 6/1/1968 Santa Ana Mountains, south of Corona, California: Dean Pack, a Santa Ana insurance executive was hiking with his son in a secluded part of the Santa Ana Mountains. After the assassination, he recognized Sirhan as "strongly resembling" a young man whom they had encountered during their hike. The young man was shooting at cans set up on a hillside, shooting with a pistol. The young man was in the company of a girl (in her early twenties with long brunette hair) and another man who was around six feet tall, with sandy colored hair and a ruddy complexion. The main thing that struck Pack "was how unfriendly they were." The shooter refused to reply or talk to Pack, standing and glaring at him. The tall young man was the only one who would even acknowledge his greeting. Their hostility was so strong that Pack had the "funny sensation that it would be possible for them to put a bullet in your back" and was relived to get out of their sight. Pack reported the incident to the FBI, offering to take them to the spot to recover bullets or shell casings and look for fingerprints on the bottles and cans being handled by the three. The FBI was uninterested. A two-sentence LAPD report on Pack states that he "was exhibited a photograph of Sirhan" and said that the man he saw "strongly resembled" Sirhan but that he "was not positive of the identification." When interviewed by Christian in 1969, Pack stated that he had only talked to the police on the telephone, had been shown no picture and still felt that the young man he and his son had seen shooting was Sirhan. The lack of police interest in Pack's report is particularly strange since they had developed considerable evidence that Sirhan was indeed in the Corona area on June 1, shooting his gun. Detective Chief Houghton described the "Corona Police Department Gun Range investigation" on pages 251 and 252 of Special Unit Senator. The range master, William Marks (a Corona policeman) identified Sirhan from a photo display, as did Harry Starr, the range assistant. In addition, the sign in log for the range contained Sirhan's signature and the District Attorney's handwriting expert gave an official opinion that it was indeed Sirhan's. The only issue with the Corona range sighting was that both men reported Sirhan in the company of another man and both apparently gave a description of Sirhan which would have had him a good deal too tall as well as too heavy (the height and weight of the second man would have been much closer to Sirhan). Because of the discrepancy in the descriptions, the police officially rejected the sighting. However, Chief Houghton himself seems to be of a different opinion on the incident, closing his own writing on the incident by stating that Sirhan probably had used up his bullets at the range, causing him to purchase the two boxes of ammunition that a sales receipt found in his car had recorded for that date. In fact, Houghton opens the third section of his book with a statement that Sirhan had spent time at the Corona practice range that day! In addition to the incidents noted above, there is an ongoing pattern of Sirhan "stalking" RFK at other public appearances. That pattern will be discussed at more length in an essay on Sirhan. However, his association with others, specifically a young girl, continued on to repeated sightings at the Ambassador hotel.
  
• 6/2/1968 (Sunday) Sirhan goes to the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where an RFK rally is being held, but he does not get close to the Senator. Ambassador busboy Juan Romero recalled on this day seeing two strangers who had come into the kitchen looking for white coats similiar to those worn by the waiters.
  
• 6/2/1968 Karen Ross was interviewed by Ramparts Detectives on June 6, 1968. She stated that while attending a rally for RFK in the Coconut Grove room in the Ambassador Hotel, the Sunday before the assassination, she had observed a young woman in a polka dot dress at the rally. The woman was medium height, somewhat "husky" with dark blond hair worn with a "puff". Ross thought there was something unusual about the girl's nose, possibly it had been "fixed". Sirhan was also at the Ambassador that evening. He was positively identified as having been in the Coconut Grove room by Mrs. Susan Redding and later in the vicinity of the Embassy ballroom by Burt Blume. Blume knew Sirhan personally because he had worked next door from him and Sirhan had dropped by frequently, making small talk. In RFK Must Die!, Robert Kaiser wrote that at first Sirhan denied being at the Ambassador on Sunday, then admitted being at the hotel but specifically called two individuals who reported him in the area of the kitchen, liars.
  
• 6/3/1968 (Monday) Kennedy was scheduled to speak in San Diego at a rally at the El Cortez Hotel. Sirhan made the two-hour trip in his 1956 De Soto and returned that evening to Pasadena, failing to get to RFK.
  
• 6/3/1968 Preacher Oliver B. Owen claims that on this day he gave Sirhan a ride and saw him talking with other young people; Sirhan had him stop by the Ambassador Hotel for a few minutes, and they discussed Owen selling a horse to him.
  
• 6/3/1968 Before an audience of students at San Fernando State College, California, RFK said, "I now fully realize that only the powers of the Presidency will reveal the secrets of my brother's death." This is apparently a false quote; there is no contemporary record of his making this statement. John Davis mentions this quote in Dynasty and Disaster (p603) but gives no source for it. See March 25th.
  
• 6/4/1968 (Tuesday) Artist Andy Warhol is shot and wounded by crazed feminist Valerie Solanas.
  
• 6/4/1968 Eleven days before his 13th birthday, David Kennedy nearly drowned while he and his siblings were swimming in the Pacific Ocean near the Malibu, California beach house of a Kennedy family friend, Hollywood film director John Frankenheimer. Kennedy had been knocked over by a wave and was trapped on the bottom by the undertow. His father, Robert Kennedy, dove under the water and rescued him, scraping and bruising his own forehead in the process. Frankenheimer gave Senator Kennedy theatrical makeup to hide the bruise while appearing on television hours later. At just after Midnight on June 5, David watched on TV as his father claimed victory in the California presidential primary election; the 12-year-old then watched as the same broadcast reported his father's assassination moments later. The event left an emotional scar on David and he became a drug user shortly thereafter.
  
• 6/4/1968 11am Sirhan arrived at the San Gabriel Valley Gun Club, and rapid-fires his .22 pistol until late afternoon, and is seen in the company of an attractive blond girl. He also bought some .22-caliber Super-X "Long Rifle" ammunition. He blazed away at the target more rapidly than regulations allowed, but the rangemaster was impressed with his shooting ability and left him alone. At one point, Sirhan complained that some of the Super-X bullets were duds. The rangemaster sold him Mini-Mag hollow-point bullets. Sirhan seemed pleased that they inflicted more damage. "They spread a lot more on impact," he told another shooter.
  
• 6/4/1968 Harold Weisberg appeared on television in Washington where he discussed the possibility of Robert Kennedy being assassinated. Weisberg recalled a meeting with a Kennedy aide. Weisberg asked why Kennedy had supported the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report. He replied: "it is simple, Bobby wants to live." Kennedy's friend added that there were "too many guns between Bobby and the White House". Weisberg asked who controlled these guns. The friend replied in such a way that Weisberg got the impression that he meant the CIA.
  
• 6/4/1968 5pm After leaving the range, Sirhan drove to a Bob's Big Boy restaurant in Pasadena. There, he met an Indian exchange student he knew and the two of them went to the City College cafeteria to talk with some Arab students. About 7:30pm, he drove to downtown L.A. to see a "Jew parade" he had read about in the paper, but he had misread the story, for it was not scheduled until 6/5.
  
• 6/4/1968 An Edward Wegmann memo from this day reported that Gurvich recalled Jim Garrison wanting to "raid the local FBI office" to uncover "the secret recording room" that he believed monitored all of his discussions.
  
• 6/4/1968 Just before 9pm, Sirhan arrived at the Ambassador Hotel on Wiltshire Blvd. Kennedy supporters were everywhere, waiting for an appearance by the candidate. Sirhan wandered into a party for Republican candidate Max Rafferty, and after drinking two Tom Collinses, he was asked to leave the party he had crashed. Outside he met two Kennedy supporters; Sirhan said, "Don't worry about him if he doesn't win, that son of a bitch. He's a millionaire and he doesn't need to win. He just wants to go to the White House, but even if he wins he's not going to do anything for you or for any of the poor people." By 11pm he had downed two more Tom Collinses. He later claimed that his last memory of that night was going out to his car and deciding he was too drunk to drive. He actually retrieved his gun and left his wallet in the car.
  
• 6/4/1968 Three primaries today: California (McCarthy 42%, RFK 46%); New Jersey (McCarthy 36%, RFK 31%); South Dakota (McCarthy 20%, RFK 50%)
  
• 6/4/1968 The evening of the primary election, Irene Gizzi noticed a group of three people "who just didn't seem to be dressed properly for the occasion." The individuals were talking amongst each other and didn't fit in with the exuberant crowd. The young woman in the group had on a polka dot dress and was with a young man with a dark complexion, dark hair and a gold colored shirt. She felt that the third man might well have been Sirhan. Gizza was in the company of a friend, Katherine Keir, who corroborated her observation of the group and gave a very similar description of the individuals including the girl being in a polka dot dress and one man being in a gold colored shirt.
  
• 6/4/1968 Between 9:30 and 10pm, a Western Union telex operator talked to Sirhan in the Colonial Room. Judy Royer, a Kennedy staffer, was trying to clear unauthorized people out of the pantry and kitchen area; she twice asked Sirhan to leave the area. But by 11pm Sirhan was still in the serving pantry. He had the .22 pistol tucked in the wasteband of his trousers.
  
• 6/4/1968 10pm Sirhan asked a hotel electrician, Hans Bidstrup, how long the Senator would be staying at the hotel, and asked if his bodyguards were with him all the time.
  
• 6/4/1968 10pm Lonny Worthy had brought his wife and a friend to the Ambassador Hotel, hoping to join in the Kennedy victory celebration. Unable to enter the Embassy Room without official campaign or press credentials, they settled for mixing in a first floor room set apart for campaign workers. At about 10 p.m. Lonny went to the bar to get his wife a Coke and accidentally bumped into an individual he would later identify as Sirhan Sirhan. Lonny apologized but received no reply. Later he saw a young woman standing beside the same man; the two weren't talking with each other, they weren't talking with anyone. Worthy described this encounter in an interview with the FBI on June 7, 1968, two days after the attack in which Robert F. Kennedy was fatally wounded. His and several other FBI witness interviews were included in an August 1969 FBI Summary Report which remained classified until released after FOIA action in 1976. However, Worthy's observation about the woman and identification of Sirhan didn't make it into the LAPD's own Summary Report. Booker Griffin also lacked campaign credentials; he ended up in the same room as Worthy. Later Griffin recalled eventually noticing two people in the room who "seemed out of place…because everyone else but these two were celebrating." One was a small, shabbily-dressed man that Griffin would identify to police as Sirhan Sirhan; the second was a girl slightly taller, in a white dress with designs of another color, possibly polka dots. Sirhan and the girl were in proximity to each other but not speaking; Griffin simply had the feeling that they might have been together.
  
• 6/4/1968 10:30 PM Pauline Walker tried unsuccessfully to enter the ballroom beginning around 10:30 p.m. When blocked there, she tried the rear kitchen access but was blocked by guards before she could enter the ballroom. Returning to the lobby outside the Embassy room, she waited some time until she recognized a friend who eventually managed to get her into the ballroom. Walker's LAPD interview of June 6, 1968 relates that she observed a young woman in a polka dot dress, in the company of a young, dark skinned male. The woman was in her 20's, hair a bit unkempt and described as "busty". The man was in jeans, a windbreaker and sneakers with dark hair that appeared greasy. Walker's independent descriptions are noteworthy for being almost identical to those provided by Sandra Serrano.
  
• 6/4/1968 11-11:30 PM As the evening progressed, George Green began to look for his friend Booker Griffin, who he thought would be able to come up with credentials or passes. He found Griffin, who had gotten a press pass, but Griffin was unable to get anything for Green. However, Griffin found that he could enter the Colonial (Press) room by going down the adjacent hall, though the service doors and into the kitchen service hall which ran behind both the Embassy ballroom and the Colonial room. While in the hallway, he observed a group of photographers and press interviewing Frank Mankiewicz; this would have been between 11 and 11:30 p.m.. At that time he noticed the young man whom he would later identify as Sirhan (wearing jeans, a shirt and jacket) standing at the edge of the crowd, along with a taller, thin Caucasian (about 22 years of age) and a female Caucasian (good figure, wearing a polka dot dress). By 11 p.m., Booker Griffin had managed to obtain a press pass from Pierre Salinger, an acquaintance, which gained him access to both the Embassy ballroom and the Colonial (Press) Room on the second floor. Due to the crowds and heat in the ballroom, Griffin made several trips to the Colonial room which was much cooler and less crowded using the rear kitchen/service corridor to avoid the crowds trying to enter the ballroom. At around 11:30 he observed the same small man (Sirhan) in the kitchen corridor. Later, during the Senator's speech, Griffin encountered Sirhan, a taller white male and a young, blonde haired woman, all standing in proximity to each other. There was now a third person with the two a young man who was muscular and rather tall, over six feet tall. Griffin would notice Sirhan again a short while later and remark to a friend that he seemed to keep running across this same fellow. Griffin, Green and Worthy weren't the only ones that had noticed Sirhan that night or the young woman. There were also witnesses to the young woman in the company of other men, not identified as Sirhan.
  
• 6/4/1968 11:45pm By now it became clear that Kennedy had won the California primary (he received 46.3% to McCarthy's 41.8%) He and his entourage made their way down to the Embassy Ballroom by way of the serving pantry, though Sirhan made no move (if he was there). While RFK was addressing the crowd, Sirhan appeared in the pantry and asked employees Jesus Perez and Martin Patrusky, "Is Mr. Kennedy coming this way?" Neither were sure, but Sirhan looked the kitchen area over while he talked to them.
  

• 6/5/1968 (Wednesday) Just before RFK and his party entered the Embassy Room for his speech, campaign worker Susanne Locke had noticed a young woman standing between the stage and the main door. She described the woman as "expressionless" and "somewhat out of place," noting that she had no badge and wore a white dress with blue polka dots. Locke was concerned enough about the girl to report her to Carol Breshears, the woman in charge of the "Kennedy Girls" support organization. Breshears is said to have alerted a security guard on the matter, but there is no record that later investigators sought further information about the security guard and what he may or may not have done about this. Locke's observations on the polka dot dress girl, comprising about a third of her FBI interview, did not make it into the LAPD reports. TV footage from the Embassy ballroom and numerous other witness reports make it clear that there were multiple women in polka dotted dresses of various sorts in the hotel the evening of June 4th. Clearly this proved to be a distraction for the LAPD investigation, however there is also no indication that the police attempted to plot the observations, differentiate or collate them in any meaningful fashion. In fact, all follow-up of the various observations regarding a polka dot dressed girl were discounted from further investigation based on the highly questionable police rejection of a single witness Sandra Serrano.
  
• A few minutes after midnight, RFK delivered a short speech of thanks to the 1800 supporters in the Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel. "We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. I intend to make that the basis for my running."
  
• During Kennedy's speech, Roy Mills observed a group of five people (including a woman) in the hallway outside the Embassy room. He identified one as Sirhan, remembering him specifically for his baggy pants. Mills had the impression that one of the men was a hotel employee. Darnell Johnson, one of the pantry shooting witnesses, described four men and a girl in the pantry as RFK was entering. One of the men was Sirhan. The girl was in a polka dot dress. The girl and the men walked out of the pantry as everyone was rushing to RFK and wrestling with Sirhan.
  
• 12:15am (PST) Robert Kennedy now began his journey to the Colonial Room where he was to hold a press conference. Someone suggested that Kennedy should take a short cut through the kitchen. Security guard Thane Eugene Cesar took hold of Kennedy's right elbow to escort him through the room.
  
• "There was a wonderful spirit upstairs on the fifth floor of the Ambassador Hotel," Union official and RFK supporter Paul Schrade said. "I sat with Bob and Ethel. There came a point when the decision was made to go downstairs a little after midnight." After thanking supporters, Kennedy was diverted from his planned exit to move through the hotel pantry. Schrade remembers him shaking hands with two Hispanic employees of the hotel. "He turned and then I got hit. I got the first shot," Schrade recalled. "I thought I was being electrocuted. I fell right behind Bob. ... I was in and out of consciousness and when I came to and the doctor arrived, I said, `Take care of the senator.'"
  
• Karl Uecker was slightly ahead of the Senator and to his right. Uniformed security guard Thane Cesar walked slightly behind, also on Kennedy's right. (In 1968, presidential candidates weren't given secret service protection, so the hotel had hired eight private security guards. Kennedy had requested that the guards keep their distance, so he wouldn't be surrounded by uniformed personnel.) A young, dark-haired man began to approach Kennedy from the front. He was smiling, and bystanders thought he wanted to shake the Senator's hand. But the smile was betrayed by his words: "Kennedy, you son of a bitch!" High school student Lisa Urso saw the young man raise the gun and begin to shoot. "I saw the flash [from the gun] and then I saw the Senator .... He went forward, then moved backward...As Robert Kennedy moved towards Sirhan, witnesses reported a yell - "Kennedy, you son of a bitch!" and then two quick shots. Numerous witnesses saw a smiling Sirhan holding a pistol, others saw RFK slump after the initial shots. After the first two shots, Karl Uecker leaped towards Sirhan, grabbing his gun hand and pushing him back on the steam table. Freddy Plimpton described Sirhan: "...his eyes were narrow, the lines on his face were heavy and set and he was completely concentrated on what he was doing." It was a look of "intense concentration." Plimpton heard two rapid shots, then a pause, then three more shots. "I immediately grabbed the gun hand of the assailant and pushed him onto the steam table. During this time he, the assailant, continued to fire the gun," reported maitre'd Karl Uecker. Edward Mininsian, at RFK's right front and a little ahead of Uecker, pushed Uecker and Sirhan against the steam table. "I saw the fellow behind the Senator fall (that was Paul Schrade, shot in the top of the head), then the Senator fell."
  
• Even with his hand pinned, Sirhan continued to fire. Four more bystanders were wounded. Shortly there were half a dozen men wrestling with Sirhan, one jumped on the steam table and stomped on his gun hand. The gun squired loose on the floor even then, covered by bodies, Sirhan managed to seize the gun again and the struggle continued. Finally Roosevelt Grier managed to twist the weapon away from Sirhan. As more men rushed to pummel and beat at Sirhan, Jesse Unruh moved to prevent mob retaliation against him. Unruh then began trying to establish some sort of order in the pantry as others continued to struggle with Sirhan. Joseph La Hive managed to get Sirhan's feet off the floor, twisting his leg. Sirhan told him "stop, you're hurting my leg!" By that time Grier, at 290 pounds, had pinned Sirhan to the table; Unruh, Grier and Rafer Johnson continued to fight off people milling around him. Finally two policemen arrived accompanied by Unruh, led Sirhan out of the pantry and to a police car outside the west door of the hotel. Unruh jumped in the car along with Sirhan. Witnesses in the pantry reported Sirhan had either a smirk or a sort of smile on his face as RFK approached him -in the patrol car, officer Placencia felt that Sirhan's expression was "smirky." Placencia noted that Sirhan's eyes were dilated, suggesting either that he had been drinking or was possibly on some sort of drug. Witnesses to Sirhan's drinking at the hotel would turn up later, Sirhan had indeed been drinking to at least some extent prior to entering the pantry.
  
• An eyewitness, Donald Schulman, a runner for KNXT-TV in Los Angeles, went on CBS News to say that Sirhan "stepped out and fired three times; the security guard hit Kennedy three times." He'd been standing behind Kennedy as he walked through the pantry and had seen a security guard fire three times. Immediately after the shooting, Schulman reported his story on the radio and insisted that Kennedy was shot three times. Even though the early media reports and crime--scene witnesses generally asserted that the Senator was hit only twice, Schulman stuck to his story. The autopsy proved him right. (In later law-enforcement interviews, when Schulman was under pressure to be "absolutely positive" about what he saw, Schulman stated that he didn't see the guard shoot Kennedy, as his first statement seemed to imply. He did assert that he saw the guard fire three times and Kennedy hit three times, but admitted he couldn't necessarily connect the two events.)
  
• Scott Enyart, a high-school student, was taking photographs of Robert Kennedy as he was walking from the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel to the Colonial Room where the press conference was due to take place. Enyart was standing slightly behind Kennedy when the shooting began and snapped as fast as he could. As Enyart was leaving the pantry, two LAPD officers accosted him at gunpoint and seized his film. Later, he was told by Detective Dudley Varney that the photographs were needed as evidence in the Sirhan trial. The photographs were not presented as evidence but the court ordered that all evidential materials had to be sealed for twenty years. In 1988 Scott Enyart requested that his photographs should be returned. At first the State Archives claimed they could not find them and that they must have been destroyed by mistake. Enyart filed a lawsuit which finally came to trial in 1996. During the trial the Los Angeles city attorney announced that the photos had been found in its Sacramento office and would be brought to the courthouse by the courier retained by the State Archives. The following day it was announced that the courier's briefcase, that contained the photographs, had been stolen from the car he rented at the airport. The photographs have never been recovered and the jury subsequently awarded Scott Enyart $450,000 in damages.
  
• In an FBI interview, RFK campaign worker George Green described following the Kennedy party into the service hall and pantry area. He had just entered the pantry as the shooting broke out, and immediately noticed a young woman in a polka dot dress and a man attempting to get out of the pantry area while everyone else was still moving in behind Senator Kennedy. The two were running away and had their backs to him at that point. Green's observation was supported by Evan Freed, a press photographer. Freed also observed a young woman and man rush out of the pantry immediately after the shooting.
  
• Booker Griffin had also trailed the Kennedy party towards the pantry; as he entered the pantry itself, he too observed a girl and a man rush out together, followed by a second man who seemed to be chasing them. Griffin recognized the first man and the woman as the same individuals he had seen earlier in the evening, standing in the corridor between the Colonial and Embassy ballrooms - along the man he later identified as Sirhan Sirhan. The LAPD Summary Report dismisses Griffin's information by stating that "the story of a male and female escaping was a total fabrication on his part." However, nothing in the tapes, transcripts or summaries of Griffin's interviews mentions any indication of this. In 1987, Griffin was shown the statement in the Summary Report and angrily rejected the charge; he described being a trained newsperson and his ability to note details. Since the report was held secret for some twenty years, Griffin and many other witnesses were in no position to know what had been done with their information at the time; as far as they knew, each of their observations was unique.
  
• Dr. Marcus McBroom had been standing outside the access doors to the service pantry corridor when he heard the first couple of gunshots. A young woman immediately ran past him into the Embassy room; she was wearing a polka dot dress and shouting something as she passed. McBroom thought it sounded like "We got him!" or "We shot him!" but at that instant he was not certain. It became clearer to him as he saw the girl quickly followed by a young man. The man had a newspaper over his arm, but McBroom could see a pistol underneath. McBroom and an ABC cameraman both drew away upon seeing the gun. McBroom described the young man as an "Arab looking person" wearing a blue suit and sweating noticeably; when later shown some mug shots, McBroom actually picked out one of Sirhan's brothers. (Evan Freed had also noted that the man he saw was similar in appearance to Sirhan.) The LAPD Summary Report does not mention McBroom's observations about the girl, but does mention that he retracted all additional statements he made other than his noticing that Sirhan Sirhan seemed "out of place." When interviewed in 1986 by Greg Stone, McBroom denied that he had ever retracted any statements and reviewed the details of the incident, including the partially hidden gun.
  
• A 1969 filmed and tape-recorded interview of Thane Cesar with journalist Theodore Charach (shown in The Second Gun):
  

Cesar: For some reason, I don't know why, I had a hold of his [Kennedy's] arm under his elbow here ... his right arm .... And I was a little behind Bobby.... When the shots were fired, when I reached for my gun, and that's when I got knocked down....
Charach: Did you see other guys pull their guns after you pulled your gun...in the kitchen?
Cesar: No, I didn't see anyone else pull their guns in the kitchen area.... Except for myself....
Charach: How far did you have it out?
Cesar: Oh, I had it out of my holster. I had it in my hand.

• Ace Guard Jack Merritt reported to both the LAPD and FBI that he had observed "two men and a woman leaving the kitchen," the woman wearing a polka dot dress and both of the men in suits: "They seemed to be smiling."
  
• Evan Freed, a part-time news photographer, was near Robert Kennedy when the shooting started. Freed had been in the fifth floor Kennedy suite, one of the newsmen covering the Kennedy party, and had come downstairs with the Senator. Kennedy had chosen to use the service elevator in order to avoid going through the crowds in the hotel corridors and ballroom. He entered the Embassy room through the kitchen service area at the rear of the ballroom. In Freed's first police interview, June 14, he described seeing two men and a woman leave the pantry in a hurry after the shooting; the woman was described as possibly wearing a polka dot dress. In a "re-interview" on August 1, his presence in the pantry is described but there is no mention of the three individuals. In a September interview by the FBI, Freed is described as identifying the man doing the shooting as Sirhan. Freed himself stated that he did describe the second man to the FBI but they were only interested in his identification of Sirham.
  
• 12:21 am Sgt. Paul Sharaga had arrived at Rampart Station shortly before midnight on June 4th, 1968. By sheer coincidence he happened to be almost immediately across from the Ambassador when the all units message was broadcast. He immediately took the 8th street entrance and entered the rear parking lot; at approximately 12:21 he slammed on his breaks about 150 feet from the hotel complex. He had just stepped out of the police cruiser when a woman ran past him yelling "He's been shot!" Sharaga turned to chase her down but at that point a middle aged couple ran up to him, also yelling that Senator Kennedy had been shot. Sharaga immediately asked them how they knew the Senator had been shot. The woman pointed toward the dimly lit backside of the hotel complex, to a fire escape ending in a concrete walkway. She said she and her husband had just come from the Embassy ballroom where Kennedy had spoken. They had taken a side door out and on to the fire escape balcony where they encountered a young couple rushing out of the ballroom. The young woman was yelling "We shot him! We shot him! The older couple was mystified, the wife asking "Who did you shoot?" The young man said nothing but the girl replied "Kennedy! We shot him! We shot him!" The young people proceeded on down the fire escape stairs, leaving the older couple terrified and in shock. Sharaga took notes on the couple (he recalled them saying they were the Bernsteins) and their basic descriptions of the young people, early 20's, medium height and build, the girl wearing a black and white polka dotted dress. And the older couple were certain about what they had heard, as the girl was talking, both she and the young man had big smiles on their faces they appeared absolutely gleeful. At 12:23 a.m. Sgt Sharaga radioed LAPD headquarters that Senator Kennedy had been shot at the Ambassador hotel, describing two suspects and calling available units to the rear parking lot. Eventually Sharaga received word that a senior officer (Remparts Detective Sgt William Jordon) had taken charge of the crime scene in the kitchen pantry of the hotel. Sharaga tore out the notebook pages with the Bernstein information and sent it off to be hand carried by one of his own officers to Jordon. Shortly afterwards he was approached by Inspector John Powers who told him the shooting suspect was in custody so radio alerts for other suspects were unwarranted. Sharaga didn't really agree with that and discussed it with Captain Carroll Kirby; Kirby told him to go ahead and continue radio alerts every ten minutes. However, about half an hour later, Inspector Powers (Acting Chief of LAPD Detectives) contacted Sharaga, told him the shooter was in custody so there were no other suspects. Powers himself called Control, instructing them to disregard Sharaga's earlier broadcasts the radio log records Powers instruction that there was only one man "and we don't want them to get anything started on a big conspiracy." Later, Powers would again call Sharaga, ordering him to return the officers that Sharaga had collected to active duty; Powers had brought his own personnel onto the scene. In the following days, Sharaga would hear more about the polka dot dress girl; he assumed the information he had passed to Sgt. Jordon that evening had become part of the suspect file on her.
  
• Officer Placencia read Sirhan his rights and Sirhan responded that he understood them and wished to remain silent. Upon arrival at the station, Sirhan was searched. He carried no billfold, no identification at all. The lack of a billfold or any sort of ID concerned police from the very beginning. Chief Houghton notes, in Special Unit Senator, that in a crime of passion its unusual to find the attacker taking the time to strip themselves of all forms of ID. [4] Among the items taken from Sirhan's jeans were four $100 bills, a car key and a copy of a May 26 Pasadena Independent Star-News article by David Lawrence; the column discussed RFK's opposition to the Vietnam war and his support for Israel. In addition, there was a copy of a newspaper advertisement for an RFK rally at the Ambassador hotel. The Krantz report noted that Sirhan had only $500 left over from a $1,750 workmen's compensation settlement paid to him only months before the assassination (the claim went back to his fall from a horse in mid-1966). The money was allegedly being held by Sirhan's mother and he "withdrew" almost all of it shortly before or on the actual day of the assassination. During the police search, Sirhan winced when his leg was touched. He told Sergeant Johnson that he had previously mentioned that his leg hurt. And he gave Johnson the complete badge number for the officer whom he had mentioned it to, demonstrating that during his arrest and transport Sirhan was alert enough to his surroundings to memorize the officer's badge number. Detectives joined Sirhan in the station homicide room, other officers came and went. Sirhan refused to answer any type of question, including his identity. Then Sergeant Patchett tried to probe him…."Are you ashamed of your name?" Sirhan responded to that, loudly and clearly, he said "Hell No!"
  
• 12:32am (PST) Kennedy is taken from the Ambassador in an ambulance to Central Receiving Hospital.
  
• 12:35am John Ambrose, LA Deputy District Attorney, was in the area of the Ambassador hotel when he heard a news bulletin on the Kennedy shooting. He arrived at the hotel in approximately 15 minutes. Upon entering the hotel's main entrance, a young woman (Sandra Serrano) came running up to him and asked for his help in informing the proper authorities in regard to an encounter she had experienced. She described meeting two young people in the vicinity of the emergency stairway outside the Embassy ballroom at the rear of the hotel. In passing her, the girl had stated "We just shot him! When Serrano asked who had been shot the girl replied "We just shot Senator Kennedy!" Ambrose immediately asked Serrano if the woman could have actually said "They just shot Senator Kennedy" and Serrano replied that she was sure the girl said "we" and used the name "Kennedy". Serrano gave Ambrose the following descriptions the girl a Caucasian, early twenties, very "shapely", wearing a black and white polka dot dress. The young man was Latin in appearance (Mexican-American as perceived by Serrano) with black hair and a gold sweater. In his follow-on letter to the LAPD, Ambrose stated that Serrano impressed him as a very sincere person and although she was very alarmed and excited, Serrano was positive about the girl's statements. Ambrose had taken down contact information on Serrano and had personally taken Serrano to the shooting scene and turned her over to investigation officers as a witness. Upon identifying himself to officers and presenting Serrano as a witness, the two were led to a room with LAPD detectives. The detectives talked with Serrano and another witness in the room (Vincent Diperro) listened to the conversation, Diperro commented that he had also seen a girl in a polka dot dress in the pantry at the time of the shooting. Not long after this, Serrano was interviewed on television by the press. Ambrose expressed his concern to the officers about this but they took the attitude that it was too late to do anything about it. Ambrose was informed by the police they were going to take Serranto to Ramparts for questioning; Serrano requested that Ambrose come along and he followed after calling her Aunt and Uncle with whom she lived. Upon arriving at Ramparts and identifying himself he was told he would not be needed; the following day he called Ramparts and gave detectives the information Serrano had given him. They took his number but made no further contact with him, resulting in his writing a letter to his supervisor on June 7th. In it he mentions being impressed by Serrano and felt that she was not at all impressed with publicity. He had called her at her home the following day and she had expressed regret that she had been interviewed on TV and was in fear for her safety. She told him she was actually about to leave the hotel when she saw him enter and felt compelled to tell someone her story. Over the next few days, additional witnesses would emerge. They would further corroborate the existence of this particular young woman in a polka dot dress. They would also place her in the vicinity of other people, including someone who looked a good deal like Sirhan Sirhan.
  
• 12:57am (PST) Kennedy is taken from Central Receiving to Good Samaritan Hospital.
  
• 1am (PST) RFK arrives at Good Samaritan Hospital.
  
• Shortly before 2 a.m., Doctor Lanz examined Sirhan in those areas where Sirhan complained of pain. Sirhan refused to tell the physician his name, and the physician told the officers present that Sirhan was not in need of any immediate medical treatment but that Sirhan should keep as much weight as possible off his left ankle as it was probably sprained. At this time Chief Deputy District Attorney Lynn Compton and Deputy District Attorney John Howard arrived, as did members of the District Attorney's investigative staff. In an interrogation room, Howard asked Sirhan his name. Sirhan did not answer, and at that time Sirhan and was advised by Howard of his constitutional rights. Sirhan nodded in the direction of Sergeant Jordon and stated I will stand by my original decision to remain silent." Sirhan asked no questions as to why he had been arrested and demonstrated no curiosity about recent events. During Sergeant Jordon's various contacts with Sirhan, including the four to five hours he spent with Sirhan at the arraignment and immediately prior and subsequent thereto, Sirhan never appeared irrational. While refusing to identify himself by name or place of origin, Sirhan engaged in banter with Sergeant Jordon. Jordon formed the opinion that Sirhan had a very quick mind', and that Sirhan was one of the most alert and intelligent persons' the officer had ever interrogated or attempted to interrogate during his 15 years experience on the police force."
  
• 2:35am (PST) Police interview witness Sandra Serrano, who tells them she saw a girl in a polka-dot dress with Sirhan; she ran out of the Ambassador after the shooting with a young man. "She practically stepped on me, and she said, "We've shot him. We've shot him." Then I said, "Who did you shoot?" And she said, "We shot Senator Kennedy." And I says, "Oh, sure." She came running down the stairs, very fast, and then the boy in the gold sweater came running down after her, and I walked down the stairs." The girl was described in the APB (All Points Bulletin) as follows: "Prior to the shooting, suspect observed with a female cauc., 23/27, 5-6, wearing a white viole dress, ¾ inch sleeves, with small black polka dots, dark shoes, bouffant type hair. This female not identified or in custody." - L.A.P.D. Sergeant Paul Shraga. APB from SUS files. This one was dated 6/5/68, and was not cancelled until 6/21/68
  
• Around 2:45am they began to operate on Kennedy. It lasted more than three hours.
  
• 3:10am (PST) Surgery began on RFK's head wound.
  
• Around 3:15 LAPD police officers took Sirhan to Interrogation Room No. 1. Howard and Jordan began an interview with their superiors watching through the one way mirror. Sirhan's first remarks were about his concerns with the clothing he had been given and his appearance. And he was willing to talk his subject of choice being a prior murder case (Kirschke), one in which the death penalty was reduced to life in prison. Within only two hours of the attack on RFK, Sirhan wanted to talk about crime and punishment in the California legal system. He also wanted to discuss the fairness of the death penalty. Sirhan's conversation included his concern over his pants and appearance. However, he also expressed his concern for the officers when Howard asked him why Sirhan was laughing he replied, "Your predicament. You're fencing." A few minutes later Sirhan asked the time and was told it was twenty minutes to four. "I'm allowed seventy-two hours before I'm brought before a magistrate." He had done some homework but was a bit off, Jordan corrected him; it was actually forty-eight.
  
• 3:31am (EST) LBJ was awakened and told the news of the shooting by Walt Rostow. His reaction to the news that Robert Kennedy had been mortally wounded on June 5, 1968, shortly after midnight California time, is revealing. Johnson was awakened almost immediately, and was not able to sleep the rest of the night. "There was an air of unreality about the whole thinga nightmare quality," Lady Bird Johnson wrote in her diary. "It couldn't be true. We must have dreamed it. It had all happened before."
  
• Between telephone calls to Ramsey Clark, J. Edgar Hoover, and James Rowley, the chief of the Secret Service, Johnson doodled on a memo from the previous day. In the first hours after the shooting virtually nothing was known about Kennedy's assassin. Johnson wondered if Castro had decided that his revenge would not be complete until both Kennedy brothers were dead. He scratched out a few disjointed words: "Costra [sic] Nostra ... Ed Morgan ... send in to get Castro ... planning." By late morning, however, it was clear that Sirhan Sirhan was a disturbed loner with no apparent ties to Cuba. Johnson dropped his idea of another Cuban-instigated conspiracy. (Max Holland)
  
• 3:46 (AP) - Ramsey Clark announces he has ordered FBI to investigate.
  
• Shortly after 4 a.m. PST Jordan and Murphey tried again, trying to probe Sirhan with his interest in the Kirschke case. After expressing his idea that truth and falsehood are relative, Sirhan began to lead them again, prompting Jordon to comment that he thought Sirhan was sharp; "You're sharp, you're very sharp." Later, Murphey would tell Sirhan that he thought Sirhan was "sort of matching wits with us." Sirhan quickly diverted the exchange to names of racehorses. Then he told them that if he talked too much they "might lose interest in the mystery." The Detectives got a good laugh out of that.
  
• 4:20am (EST) Lady Bird finds Lyndon with all the televisions on watching the news about the shooting. He got on the phone and gave instructions to put Secret Service guards on all the candidates. (White House Diary)
  
• 4:30am (PST) By four-thirty in the morning the interrogating officers were ready to challenge Sirhan because the key in his possession had been matched to what they believed was his car, parked outside the hotel. Sirhan found this to be very amusing since by coincidence his key had opened a different car than his (that of a hotel waiter) and obtained a name from it. Sirhan's interrogators never made any progress with him, no name, no identification, no sign that he was doing anything but playing games with them. In turn he showed no curiosity over what had happened none at all. The only interests he displayed were in regard to past criminal cases and how the police were progressing with trying to find out something, anything, about him. The only concern he displayed during a several hour period was about his clothing and how he would look when he went for arraignment; he seemed very much aware that he would be charged and asked no questions about that subject at all. It should be mentioned that Sirhan did eventually request legal counsel. A prominent ACLU member, A. L. Wirin, did appear to counsel Sirhan. Sirhan did talk to the lawyer initially but was taken aback when he found he was Jewish. Wirin did not legally represent Sirhan but did meet with him over a limited period of time. He also held a press conference in which he stated that a request had been made to the California Bar Association to appoint a "name" attorney to represent Sirhan, such attorney to be agreeable to Sirhan himself. Wirin eventually went on record stating that Sirhan had told him he had indeed shot Senator Kennedy; there is no corroboration for his statement and it certainly seems inconsistent with Sirhan's dialog with the police.
  
• 4:45am RFK begins breathing on his own and doctors are somewhat hopeful.
  
• 4:45 (AP) - Justice Dept announces that suspect's fingerprints had been sent to Washington by FBI in Los Angeles.
  
• 5:30am (EST) LBJ called Ramsey Clark.
  
• 6am (PST) Transcript of recorded LAPD interview of Sirhan B. Sirhan of 5 Jun 1968, 6AM, p. 7. Sirhan: "We're all puppets."
  
• 6:20am Doctors completed their surgery on RFK.
  
• 6:56 (AP) Ramsey Clark says that "according to information we have at this moment we have no evidence of conspiracy."
  
• 7am Sirhan, in a secret arraignment, is charged with six counts of assault with intent to commit murder.
  
• Around 9am, Sirhan's brothers recognize his face in the papers and head for the police station to identify him. Sirhan has still not told the police what his name is.
  
• On the morning of June 5th, only hours after the murder, amateur photographers John Shirley and John Clamente took photographs of the pantry and doorframes. Shirley provided a statement about the center divider: "In the wooden jamb of the center divider were two bullet holes surrounded by inked circles which contained some numbers and letters. I remember a manager pointing out those particular bullet holes to another person who appeared to be a press photographer. It appeared that an attempt had been made to dig the bullets out from the surface. However, the center divider jamb was loose, and it appeared to have been removed from the framework so that the bullets might be extracted from behind.
  
• 10:37 (AP) Sirhan identified in Los Angeles.
  
• 10: 41 (AP) LA Mayor Yorty says identification was made by Sirhan's brother, Adel, who was traced through gun.
  
• 12:30pm Los Angeles Police put out a nationwide bulletin: "In custody suspect Sirhan Bishara Sirhan AKA Sirhan Sharif Bishara...Prior to shooting, suspect observed with a female cauc. 23-27, 5-6, wearing a white voile dress, 3/4 inch sleeves, with small black polka dots, dark shoes, bouffant type hair. This female is not identified or in custody..."
  
• 1:15pm LA's Mayor Yorty told the press that Sirhan "was a member of numerous Communist organizations, including the Rosicrucians...It appears that Sirhan Sirhan was a sort of loner who harbored Communist inclinations, favored Communists of all types. He said the US must fall." He described the diary found with the passage that "RFK must die."
  
• 6:30pm RFK's heart is still beating but his brain waves show no response.
  
• Late in the afternoon, Oliver B. Owen tells his story about encountering Sirhan to the LAPD.
  
• 7am (EST) LBJ talked with Sen. Mansfield about gun control and action on a Crime Bill. (White House Diary)
  
• 9:30am Pasadena Police Dept. Report of Sep 19, 1968. "On June 5, 1968 at 9:3 A.M., Adel and Munir Sirhan contacted this office in the Detective Bureau....The Sirhan brothers were requested to wait for the arrival of the Los Angeles Officers for further questioning". George Erhard and Munir Sirhan interview, June 5, 1968, I-152. "....he (George Erhardt) sold it (the gun) to a person that works with him at the Nash Department Store....This person was known only to him as Joe and described as a Male Latin appearance that he thought he sounded like an Arab....Subject Erhard stated he could recognize and point out Joe, he was then taken to the Nash Department Store in Pasadena where Joe, who was later ID as Sirhan, Munir, was taken into custody. At this time officers received information that Adel Sirhan also in custody at the Pasadena Police Department." LAPD interview with Munir Sirhan, June 5, 1968, 9:30AM. "So George came up with the gun....and he gave it to my brother."
  
• Transcript of recorded LAPD interview of Joseph LaHive of 5 Jun 1968. LaHive described struggling with Sirhan and pulling his left leg up.
  
• Statement of Jerry Owen, University Detective Division, June 5, I-26. "He (Sirhan) said something was happening at the Ambassador Hotel and he would take the horse..."
  
• David Eisenhower wakes Richard Nixon, who is asleep in his New York apartment, and tells him the news.
  
• The Los Angeles Police question Jim Braden about his presence in L.A. on this particular day -- 100 miles from his home. Braden was also stopped and arrested in the vicinity of the Dal-Tex building in Dallas, Texas following JFK's assassination. Braden has definite Mafia ties.
  
• Gerry Patrick Hemming states: "On the night of Bobby's assassination, I was riding with a LAPD Sergeant supervisor in what is called an "X-Ray Unit" [Extra Unit] with the call-sign "4-X-Ray 10". If you are familiar with the old "Adam-12" TV series, you might have learned that an "Adam Unit" was a basic beat patrol car. "1-Adam-12" was the car in the series. The number "1" means that the unit is from the LAPD "Central Division". While the number "4" as a prefix meant that the unit was from the [East L.A./Washington Heights] Hollenbeck Division. [This is where the now famous author, Joe Wambaugh worked upstairs as a Robbery/ Homicide Detective or "Dick"] For some unknown [to me] reason, this Sergeant opted to unofficially [no radio check-in] drive over into the Hollywood Division's jurisdiction. We were only two blocks from the Ambassador Hotel when the radio dispatcher reported the shooting there. The Sergeant did a "180", and hauled-ass back to Hollenbeck Station, and that was where we got the news that RFK was one of the multiple victims in a shooting incident."
  
• In the White House later today, LBJ is pacing, demanding, "I've got to know. Is he [RFK] dead? Is he dead yet?" After RFK's death, LBJ questions whether RFK is entitled to be buried at Arlington Cemetery. LBJ's aides manage to convince the President that denying RFK a final resting place beside his brother is not only "cruel," but "politically reckless."
  
• During the last year of his life, RFK had told his son, Joseph Kennedy II, that the full truth about the Kennedy assassination will never be known. Young Kennedy has the impression that his father knows something others do not, though exactly what remains a mystery.
  
• Aristotle Onassis hears the news of the shooting while having breakfast in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. "Somebody was going to fix the little bastard sooner or later," Onassis remarks.
  
• San Francisco Examiner, combined reports of AP and UPI: "Before Sirhan's identification Attorney General Ramsey Clark said the Justice Department and the FBI were investigating every angle but that 'at the moment' there was no indication of a conspiracy."
  
• On June 5, an AP photo was published showing two police officers pointing at something in the door frame at the rear of the stage door of the Embassy room, the door through which RFK had exited to enter the corridor leading to the pantry. The photo's caption read, "Bullet found near Kennedy shooting scene." An LAPD exhibit of this photo is captioned "Bullet is still in the wood." The location of this "bullet" is very low in the stage door frame, on the side of the door facing down the pantry corridor.
  
• This evening, LBJ went on national television to say he was setting up the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (Eisenhower Commission 6/5/1968-12/3/1969). "Two hundred million Americans did not strike down Robert Kennedy last night any more than they struck down President John F. Kennedy in 1963, or Dr. Martin Luther King, in April of this year. But those awful events give us ample warning that in a climate of extremism, of disrespect for law, of contempt for the rights of others, violence may bring down the very best among us." The Commission, headed by Milton S. Eisenhower, also contained: Archbishop Terence Cooke, Albert E. Jenner (former Warren Commission staffer), Patricia Harris, philosopher Eric Hoffer, Sens. Philip A Hart (D-Mich.), Roman Hruska (R-Neb.), Reps. Hale Boggs (ex-Warren Commission), William M. McCulloch (R-Ohio), A. Leon Higgenbotham Jr. (US District Judge); Dr. Walter Menninger (psychiatrist). The report of the Commission is issued in sections, that dealing with assassinations being made public 11/2/69. This section emphasizes that recent assassinations in the United States were non-conspiratorial, and says that historically "the evidence ... is overwhelming" that no Presidential assassination - with the exception of the abortive attempt on the life of President Truman - has been demonstrated to be the result of a conspiracy. The Commission says that before Robert Kennedy was killed, "it might have been hypothesized in 1968 that the next assassin to strike at a President - or presidential candidate, as it turned out - would have most of the following attributes …" With a few minor exceptions, the attributes listed conform to the official description of Oswald. It would present a psychological profile of assassins emphasizing their alienation and sexual dysfunction. It stressed the "critical importance" of maintaining an "overwhelming sense of the legitimacy of our government and institutions." It suggested that doubts about the lone gunmen were "a product of the primal anxieties created by the archetypal crime of parricide - not the inadequacy of the evidence of the lone assassin." "…most assassinations in the United States have been the products of individual passion or derangement…Despite this, the public…has sometimes attempted to tie the assassins to political movements or conspiracies…"
  

• 6/6/1968 (Thursday) Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (banning the sale by mail of handguns), the first federal gun-control law in 30 years. Months later, the Gun Control Act of 1968 amended and enlarged it. Johnson and Sen. Edward Kennedy urged tougher restrictions. It also contained additional funding for police. The only previous federal gun control laws were passed in 1934 and 1938 to limit traffic in gangster-weapons - sawed-off shotguns and machine-guns, prohibit interstate shipment to felons, and federal licensing of interstate dealers.
  
• Attorney General Ramsey Clark announced that there was "no evidence of a conspiracy, only the evidence of this individual act" in the RFK killing.
  
• 1:44am (PST) Robert Kennedy's heart stopped beating; he was just 42 years old.
  
• 2am Press secretary Frank Mankiewicz announced RFK's death to the press.
  
• A companion asked Jerry Ray if he thought his brother had killed MLK; Jerry Ray later acknowledged saying, "If I was in his position and had 18 years to serve and someone offered me a lot of money to kill someone I didn't like anyhow, and get me out of the country, I'd do it…If he done it there had to be a lot of money involved because he wouldn't do it for hatred or just because he didn't like somebody, because that is not his line of work." (HSCA 7 462)
  
• Richard Cardinal Cushing was quoted in the NY Times as wondering if "there may be somebody behind all of this...no one can convince me that Oswald was alone responsible for...the assassination of John Kennedy."
  
• 3:00-9:15am: autopsy on RFK's body is performed by Drs. Thomas Noguchi (L.A. County Coroner), John Holloway and Abraham Lu. Noguchi removes one intact bullet, as well as fragments of another bullet, from RFK's body. He determines that the fatal shot entered through the mastoid bone, an inch behind the RIGHT ear and traveled upward to sever the branches of the superior cerebral artery. Another bullet has penetrated Kennedy's RIGHT armpit, traveled sharply upward and exited through the topmost portion of the chest. The third shot also entered the RIGHT rear armpit, one and a half inches below the wound caused by the second shot. This is the only bullet taken out of RFK's body intact. Sirhan Sirhan, the accused assassin, was standing one to three feet IN FRONT of RFK and slightly to his left.
  
• Costa Gratos calls Aristotle Onassis with the news. Onassis reportedly replies: "She's [Jackie Kennedy] free of the Kennedys. The last link just broke." Later, Onassis will remark: "I guess the kid [RFK] had everything but the luck." (Nemesis)
  

• 6/7/1968 (Friday) 4:25pm Sirhan indicted for the murder of RFK by a Los Angeles grand jury.
  
• It is alleged that, because of RFK's death, Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis immediately put off their plans to be married in the immediate future. Onassis, however, reportedly telephones a friend and says: "She's free of the Kennedys. The last link just broke."
  
• Karl Uecker FBI interview of 7 Jun 1968: "I immediately grabbed the gun hand of the assailant and pushed him onto the steam table. During this time he, the assailant, continued to fire the gun."
  
• June 7 FBI interview of Susanne Locke, a Kennedy volunteer who saw in the Embassy Room a girl in a polka dot dress who seemed "out of place" - not wearing a yellow press badge and "expressionless." She said she pointed out the girl to "Kennedy Girls" supervisor Carol Breshears, who in turn alerted a security guard. But note that Breshear's LAPD statement describes the girl as having a McCarthy dress (at an RFK rally!), and omits mention of contacting a security guard.
  
• Sander Vanocour, NBC correspondent, reported on the mood of mourners aboard the flight that brought RFK's body back to New York. They were angry about "the faceless men" who slew the Kennedys and King. Ted Kennedy "does not know whether this is the act of a single person or if this is the act of a conspiracy." (New York Post) New York - ... Sander Vanocur, an NBC television newsman and friend of the Kennedy family, ... on a network broadcast last night … described Edward Kennedy as angry over his brother's assassination [RFK]. ... "He does not know whether it is the act of a single person, or whether this is the act of a conspiracy." San Francisco Examiner. [* Edition] [UPI] From another version [**** Edition] of same story: "They don't know, they don't - they do not know, to put it clumsily. But from him, from others in the plane, one got the impression - it's no more than that - that there's a kind of a pattern, faceless men - that's the phrase I heard." The late Senator Robert Kennedy's press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, later indicated the Kennedys were disturbed by Vanocur's reporting of events during the flight. "Everyone on the plane was there on the basis of friendship," Mankiewicz said. "There were only friends, colleagues and staff members. Nobody was there as a reporter. "The plane was private and that is how we view it. We are not going to comment on anything said on the airplane." San Francisco Examiner.
  
• Hong Kong [AP] - North Vietnam's army newspaper said today Senator Robert F. Kennedy was killed because he was leading the U.S. presidential race and, if elected, would have reopened the investigation into the 1963 assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. … [From broadcast, Hanoi radio.]
  

• 6/8/1968 (Saturday) RFK's body is carried by a funeral train from New York to Washington. Perhaps a million people line the tracks. "Marvelous crowds, " says Arthur Schlesinger, staring out the window as the train slowly rocked south. "Yes, " replies Kenny O'Donnell. "But what are they good for now?" RFK is buried at Arlington National Cemetary, a few yards away from his brother.
  
• NBC's Sander Vanocur remained a silent witness, not reporting anything for 17 minutes as the camera covered the candlelit ceremony. "I didn't know what to say. I think it spoke for itself."
  
• James Earl Ray is arrested in London at Heathrow Airport as he disembarks from an airliner bound from Portugal to Belgium. ON SATURDAY, June 8, Ray, wearing a beige raincoat and shell-rimmed glasses, presented his Canadian passport at the desk at Heathrow Airport at approximately 11:15 a.m. He had been scheduled to fly on a British European Airways flight to Brussels at 11:50. Immigration officer Kenneth Human noticed a second passport when Ray pulled the first from his jacket and asked to see that one as well. It was identical except that it had been issued in Ottawa on April 4, and the last name was "Sneya." Ray explained the misspelling and stated that he had had no time to get it corrected before leaving Canada, requiring him to take care of it in Lisbon. Ray was approached by Detective Sgt. Philip Birch of Scotland Yard, who asked to see the passports. He took Ray (as Sneyd) to a nearby room and telephoned Scotland Yard. Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Butler and Chief Inspector Kenneth Thompson were notified and headed toward Heathrow. Ray was searched by Sergeant Birch, and the officer extracted a .38 revolver from his back right pocket, the handle of which was wrapped in black electrical tape. The six-chamber gun was loaded with five rounds. Ray explained that he was going to Rhodesia and thought the gun might be needed because of the unrest there. Birch informed him that he was committing an offense for which he could be arrested. Shortly after 1:00 p.m., Butler and Thompson arrived, when Ray was placed under arrest for possession of a gun without a permit and was taken to Cannon Row police station, fingerprinted, and placed in a cell. Later