The LAPD Investigation
The morning after the assassination, the police still
did not have the killer’s name. He had no ID, was disheveled and
seemed nervous, and every time the subject of his name arose, he grew
panicky and refused to give it. Having been roughed up by the crowd at
the hotel, he seemed to jolt at every sound and kept watching the doors
of the Rampart Street police station, where he was first detained, as if
he expected a vigilante crowd to enter at any moment, rope in hand.
His paranoia was not unfounded, for according to
Sergeant William Jordan, who led the interrogation, a crowd did assemble
on the pavements. It was Jordan’s decision, in fact, to hurry the
prisoner through the back door into an awaiting squad, then hustle him
incognito downtown to headquarters’ maximum-security hall.
There, he became "Prisoner John Doe," at least
until the police could link him with fingerprints. Despite his
jumpiness, the gunman was not hostile, nor impolite; he held friendly
discourse with Jordan, and answered the detective courteously. But, he
seemed confused as if he really didn’t understand the seriousness of
his crime.
While he wasn’t remorseful for his crime, "he
wasn’t anything," Jordan observed. "The only thing I can
figure out is that one of the things I found in his pocket was an
article about where Bobby had come out very pro-Israeli. In my mind, my
theory has always been, and to this day I think it’s right, is what it
would be like if I was able to parachute into Germany in the middle of
the war and shoot Hitler. To the German people I’d be the worst
scumbag of all time. In my own mind, I’d say, ‘Hey, I’m a hero. I
did the right thing for the world.’ That’s the way he struck me. He
really believed that he had done the right thing."
Mid-morning, two brothers named Adel and Munir Sirhan
appeared at the front desk of a suburban Pasadena police station with
something they knew the police were looking for. They had seen a
television report on the previous evening’s bloody melee at the
Ambassador Hotel; footage included shots of the police escorting the
alleged perpetrator from the scene. Since the newscaster said that the
killer was still unidentified, the Sirhan brothers knew they alone could
fill in the blank. That boy they saw handcuffed, cowering, frightened,
being stuffed into a squad car by two policemen was their brother,
Sirhan.
Pasadena alerted Los Angeles and Los Angeles alerted the
FBI, and within the hour, representatives from all involved law offices
were swarming across the lawns of a small frame house at 696 East
Howard, Pasadena. Adel, co-owner of the house along with his mother,
allowed the police to enter and search. The officers zeroed in on Sirhan
Sirhan’s room. There they found an odd assortment of his own writings
in a notebook on his desk; hate remarks about Senator Kennedy. One
scribble read simply, "RFK must die."
Authorities packaged the notebooks and other effects and
took them as evidence to headquarters central. They questioned the
Sirhan family, particularly mother Mary, and learned they had come to
the United States from Jerusalem in the mid 1950s. There seemed to be
within the family no generative germ of lawlessness, subterfuge or
disloyalty. The family seemed sincerely shocked that one of their own
could have committed such an act against their adopted home.
After Kennedy died, Sirhan Sirhan was charged with
murder and (after the wounds of the others) attempted murder. When the
country learned that the assassin was a Palestinian-born anti-Jewish
Arab, the conspiracy wheel started rolling. Rumors labeled him as part
of a large and extremist terrorist organization, a spy schooled in
underground "bring down America" tactics.
Melanson and Klaber’s Shadow Play suggests that
the nation’s leaders at this point were feeling weighed under by the
country’s inability to handle growing unrest within its nouveau
cultures. Vietnam spewed mistrust in the government and disbelief in the
spirit of the American panorama. The psychedelic society of peace
marches and flower power was seeing ulterior motives and conspiracies
behind every marble column on every state capitol. The recent
assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights champion,
peppered the spice pot when government law enforcement branches were
unable to pinpoint if killer James Earl Ray acted alone or not. Shades
of the ongoing Lee Harvey Oswald/JFK conspiracy that ask, even to this
day, if Oswald was the only rifleman in Dallas that fateful November 22,
1963.
And…now this. This time America needed to stay ahead
of the doubting Thomases and, most of all, confirm it hadn’t lost its
staying power. President Lyndon Johnson quickly pointed out that Sirhan
Sirhan was not an American. In California, Governor Ronald Reagan
repeated this, and Los Angeles’ Mayor Yory repeated it again. This was
not King nor was it JFK, they emphasized…this time around there was no
American who shot another American over an American breakdown.
In trying too hard to drive this point home, Mayor Yory
tread dangerous ground. Quoting excerpts from Sirhan Sirhan’s notebook
during local news reports, Superior Court Judge Arthur Alacorn stepped
in to remind the mayor that the books were acquired without a search
warrant – and a court of law had not yet determined if Sirhan had
actually authored those words. To all vocalists connected with the case
he issued an order banning the display of further evidence in lieu of an
upcoming verdict.
Chaos notwithstanding, the LAPD formed a more
order-minded task force comprised of several law enforcement agencies to
investigate the case and gather material for the trial alone. The LAPD
Chief of Detectives Robert A. Houghton chaired the meetings, but the
team included Assistant Attorney General William Lynch, U.S. Attorney
Matt Byrne, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Brosio, members of the Los
Angeles District Attorney office, FBI agent William Nolin, and others.
Said Houghton, "(The case) had historical potential…Because the
murder had been committed in Los Angeles, we (LAPD) had jurisdiction.
However, I wanted all of the assistance and advice I could get (so) we
created the SUS." The acronym stood for Special Unit Senator.
Houghton’s orders to the SUS were direct: "We are
not going to have another Dallas here. I want you to act as if there was
a conspiracy until we can prove that there wasn’t one."