The RFK Conspiracy, Part 3

DeWayne Wolfer Hides the Second Gun

After the revelations of Fernando Faura and Lillian Castellano—plus the professional claims of Bill Harper-- people began to understand that something was seriously wrong with the official story in the RFK case. And further, that the authorities must have known about these evidentiary problems. The logical deduction being that the same authorities decided to conceal the holes in their case at Sirhan’s trial. A further deduction would be that they were aided by either the incompetence, or perhaps, negligence of Sirhan’s defense team, particularly lead lawyer Grant Cooper.

With the opening forays now made, people like former FBI agent William Turner and essayist, film-maker Ted Charach began digging deeper into the case. They started doing interviews with witnesses from the Ambassador, and also securing documents from those inside the inquiry who were unsatisfied with the results.

For example, Turner visited his old Bureau friend Roger LaJeunesse who gave him some initial FBI reports. He then visited the Ambassador Hotel pantry and tried to reconstruct what had happened. He was in for a surprise. For example, the projectile that went through the top right shoulder of RFK’s suit coat—without penetrating skin-- was at a roughly 80 degree trajectory upward. And it was moving back to front--as all the projectiles that struck RFK were. But yet the LAPD determined that this same bullet also hit victim Paul Schrade. Which might make sense if Schrade had been in front of RFK and facing him. But he was walking behind the senator. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 540). As Schrade memorably commented when he learned this, he would have to have been 8 feet tall and leaning over Bobby for that to have happened.

Elizabeth Evans was another shooting victim. She recalled being hit in the forehead below the hairline by a projectile going upwards. The LAPD said she was wrong. They said she was hit by a bullet that Sirhan had fired at the ceiling, penetrated a tile, bounced off the roof proper, and then come back into the room through a different tile, and struck Evans in her forehead—but going downward. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 541)

As the reader can see, there was just too much evidence for too many bullets being fired in the pantry. Clearly there were more than the eight that could have been fired by Sirhan. To add to all this, there was still another FBI agent, William Bailey. He wrote in an affidavit that he and his Bureau colleagues noted at least two small holes in the center divider. He then pounded his point home since the LAPD was saying these were made by food carts: “There was no question in any of our minds as to the fact that they were bullet holes and were not caused by food carts or other equipment in the preparation room.” (Ibid, p. 544; see also Philip Melanson, The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination, pp. 50-51) As William Harper predicted he would, by making projectiles serve double duty, criminalist DeWayne Wolfer was giving the prosecution not what was factual, but what they needed. The evidence clearly indicated that there had been a second gun in the pantry.

How bad was Wolfer? Pretty bad. Forensic scientist Bill Harper had warned Grant Cooper about Wolfer in advance of Sirhan’s trial. Cooper took no heed of this. He should have. When Wolfer was presenting the recovered bullets in court, he said that they all came from Sirhan’s gun. Yet, to name just one example, the FBI had noted that the Elizabeth Evans fragments should not be entered since “continuity of the bullet has been lost.” (Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail, p. 174)

But that was not all. Harper later discovered that the envelope in which the bullets were kept in was marked with a different serial number than either the gun produced at the trial, or the gun turned into the LAPD by RFK bodyguard Rafer Johson after the shooting. The bullets were inside an envelope that was marked H18602. The number should have been H53725. (Ibid, p. 177). As Philip Melanson and Lisa Pease note, what makes this even more intriguing is this: not only did Wolfer testify to the wrong gun under oath, he insisted it was the right weapon to the exclusion of all other handguns in existence. (Melanson, p. 25). This is an issue we will return to later.

To show how incompetent Sirhan’s defense team was, at the trial there was testimony that Kennedy was struck by a projectile within what experts call ‘contact range’ of the rear of his skull. This term usually denotes that the weapon is somewhere from 1-3 inches away from the target. Wolfer and coroner Thomas Noguchi had conducted experiments to duplicate the ‘tattooing’ effect that was evident around the skull wound: particles that embedded themselves in the skin since the weapon was so close they could not escape into the air. They concluded that the gun had to have been about 1-1.5 inches away. Wolfer testified the distance was one inch. (Melanson, p. 32; Pease, p. 180)

Again, like the wrong serial number, this was a strong indication that there was something wrong with the prosecution’s case. And it is very surprising that the defense did not take note of it. For journalist Robert Kaiser was on the defense team as an investigator. He notified Cooper before the trial began that there was not a witness they knew of who put Sirhan’s weapon an inch away from the senator’s skull. (Pease, p. 176). Again, it is very hard to excuse the local authorities on this point. Why? Because the LAPD actually enumerated what they thought were their five best witnesses to the shooting. None of them said that Sirhan was within that range.

For example, Frank Burns--a Kennedy worker who later became a Los Angeles lawyer--said the weapon was never even near that close. When he reconstructed the scene for Philip Melanson he estimated it as about four feet away, but perhaps even further. (Melanson, p. 33) Waiter Martin Patruski said the distance was three feet. Juan Romero, a busboy, originally said it was also about three feet. Karl Uecker, the hotel worker escorting RFK through the pantry by hand said, “There’s no way that the shots described in the autopsy could have come from Sirhan’s gun….Sirhan never got close enough for a point blank shot. Never!” (Ibid). These witnesses were all in close proximity to the shooting, at the most perhaps five feet away.

There were several other witnesses who said the same, like Lisa Urso, journalist Pete Hamill, and Valerie Schulte. But further, as Ted Charach demonstrated in his film The Second Gun, no witness ever saw Sirhan with his handgun up against the back of RFK’s head. Making this even more puzzling--and Sirhan’s defense more hapless-- are the facts that all the projectiles came in at relatively steep upward angles, right to left and in the rear of Kennedy’s body. But as many have noted, Sirhan’s arm was outstretched parallel to the floor, and he was never behind the senator, always in front of him. (Melanson, pp. 35-36).

The extremes that some defenders of the official story have gone to in order to escape these serious evidentiary problems are a bit risible. And the present author has criticized people like Dan Moldea and Michael McCowan for engaging in these wild techniques in order to pummel Sirhan in ways that do not fit the evidence. (DiEugenio and Pease, pp. 628-31)

To indicate just how hapless Sirhan’s defense was at his trial let us use an exchange between his lead lawyer Grant Cooper and prosecutor David Fitts.

Fitts: Now, there is another problem that I’d like to get to with respect to the medical. It is our intention to call DeWayne Wolfer to testify with respect to his ballistics comparison. Some of the objects or exhibits that he will need illustrative of his testimony will…not have adequate foundation, as I will concede at this time.

Cooper: You mean the surgeon took it from the body and this sort of thing?

Fitts: Well, with respect to the bullets or bullet fragments that came from the alleged victims, it is our understanding that there will be a stipulation that these objects came from the persons whom I say they came from. Is that right?

Cooper: So long as you make that avowal, there will be no questions about that. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 577)

Lisa Pease pointed out this exchange many years ago. It is worth quoting today. Cooper is allowing the prosecution, in the form of Wolfer, to set the terms of chain of custody for the evidence. The reader needs to understand what Fitts is saying when he proclaims “. . . there will be a stipulation that these objects came from the persons whom I say they came from.” Cooper is agreeing to rely on the prosecution for how and where Wolfer originated the evidence that was allegedly expelled from Sirhan’s gun to the exclusion of any other. In other words, Cooper is surrendering the whole concept of the validity of the ballistics evidence to the prosecution--on both the bullets and the weapon. He is going to rely on the prosecution’s expert, Wolfer. Yet Wolfer is the man who Harper warned Cooper at the start about giving the prosecution what it wants!

It turned out that Harper was correct. First there was a secret exhibit within the LAPD files on the RFK case. It was called Special Exhibit #10. In the LAPD description accompanying the photo exhibit, the picture was described as a comparison between a Kennedy bullet and a test bullet. It was taken through a comparison microscope to show “one Land comparison.” (A land is the raised portion of a bullet as opposed to a groove which is the depressed area.). It was designed as a rebuttal in case Sirhan ever got a new trial. It was LAPD’s evidence that Wolfer got a match between a test bullet he fired and a projectile taken from RFK’s body.

Except it wasn’t. During the 1975 firearms panel inquiry overseen by Judge Robert Wenke, it was determined that what Wolfer had done was to compare an RFK bullet with one taken from another victim that night, namely Ira Goldstein. And the panel proved this by doing another photo comparison of the actual bullets. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 564) This should have raised some interesting questions about Wolfer’s desperation in getting a matching test bullet.

When Harper passed away he left his files with Sirhan’s chief investigator Lynn Mangan. Harper had told her that the Wenke Panel had been rigged. They didn’t go far enough in exposing the perfidy of the LAPD. So Mangan decided to go the extra mile and inspect what the Wenke panel had done. Harper turned out to be correct.

Patrick Garland was the secretary who wrote a detailed inventory of the evidence that the Wenke Panel had examined. He wrote down the markings on the bullets submitted. The Kennedy bullet had ‘DWTN’ on the base. The Goldstein bullet only bore the number ‘6’. But these were not the original markings on the projectiles. For the RFK bullet, the marking should have been ‘TN31’ and the Goldstein bullet should have been marked with an ’X’. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 565) Harper had warned Mangan about this, that in their desperation to get a match, Wolfer and the LAPD would switch the bullets.

As mentioned earlier Rafer Johnson, an Olympic gold medal winner and RFK bodyguard, had taken the gun used by Sirhan with him that night. He took it home and wrote down the serial number in his diary. About two hours later he brought it to the police. When it was checked in, the recorded model number was a 56-SA. The gun in evidence is a model number 55-SA. The former model number is a starter gun and it fires blanks. (DiEugenio and Pease, pp. 568-69)

The above, plus the fact that the wrong serial number was used at the trial, plus the fact that Wolfer had used still another gun for his testing of sound, muzzle distance and powder pattern, these all raise some intriguing questions. The gun used for the tests belonged to a member of the LAPD, Jake Williams. And Wolfer said that he did not have that weapon until June 10, 1968. But there is evidence in his own records that he had the Williams gun 2 or 3 days before. In fact, there is even written evidence he had it on June 6^th! (Ibid, pp. 557-59) And it is notable that when the gun was submitted to the grand jury on June 7, 1968 the serial number was not included. Further, Wolfer was not able to produce any extant records of the tests he said he performed. Is it credible to assume that in the most important case of his life, he did not keep contemporaneous records of his tests?

Or does this indicate he was not able to get the desired result that his superiors needed? (ibid, p. 559).

If that last is so it would explain the nonsense of Special Exhibit #10 and the exchange of the bullets noted above.