I’ve barely stepped from my patrol car into this mass confusion when an older Jewish couple, in their sixties, comes rushing up.
Both at the same time they say, ‘We saw something! We saw something!’
They are almost hysterical. I yell, ‘Slow down, folks! What happened?’
Understand, at this point I didn’t know the Senator had been shot, only that there’s been a shooting at the hotel. But already the crowd chaos told me this isn’t any ordinary shooting.
The man’s breathing hard now and the woman does most of the talking.
She says, ‘We were about to leave out that side door, near the Embassy Room, onto that little balcony... with stairs going down? When this young couple comes barreling out from the ballroom in a gleeful state, and the girl bumps right into me! Late teens, early twenties, happy as a lark, singing out, “We shot him! We shot him!”
‘I yell at her, “You almost knocked me down!” Then realizing what I just heard, “Who did you say got shot?”
‘And this girl says, “Kennedy! We shot him! We killed him!”’
Mr. Heller, I’ve been a cop for over twenty years, and not much fazes me, but you know how it’s said something can make your blood run cold? Mine sure as hell did. I knew at once what the commotion was about. What the shots fired and ambulance call were about.
Another Kennedy had been killed.
So I say, ‘This couple, can you describe them?’
The old gal says the girl was white, early twenties, bouffant-type light brown hair, wearing a white dress. That lady knew fashion all right — she was very detailed in her description, dress soft sheer fabric, three-quarter sleeves, small black polka dots, dark shoes. Male was Caucasian, tall, twenty to twenty-two, very thin build, blond curly hair, wearing brown pants, gold shirt.
One thing I know, Mr. Heller, from a lot of years on the police department, is that remarks made spontaneously after a crime or an accident are very seldom colored by people’s imaginations. I knew these were valid descriptions, and jotted them right down word for word.
And this old gal, though still worked up, was perfectly rational, like that fashion-show laundry list indicates.
I ask the couple for their names and the man says, ‘We’re the Bernsteins,’ and I write that down. First names, too, and contact info, but I... I’m sorry, I can’t recall anything but ‘Bernsteins,’ and, well... you’ll see. Best I give you this as it came.
So then they lurch off and just get swallowed up in the crowd, people still running and milling and bumping into each other. Hollering, screaming. Just insane.
I notice a Rampart Station juvie detective I know, who’s heard the radio call and is trying to help out. I tear the sheet from my notebook and give it to him to hand over to the Chief of Detectives. At my patrol car I radio in a Code One and tell the Night Watch lieutenant I’ll set up a Command Post... which the first supervisory patrol officer on scene is required to do... and put out All Points Bulletins on the two suspects, descriptions as given by the Bernsteins, adding only that the direction taken by the suspects is unknown.
I get help from a dozen sheriff’s deputies who’d been counting primary ballots across the street in the IBM Building. They’d just wrapped up their work when they heard the sirens and came over to see if we needed help. A godsend. I put them on getting identifications and license numbers of everyone entering or leaving the hotel grounds.
I ask Communications Division to send some men, a minimum of six two-men units, as fast as they can. As they show up, I give them their assignments, logistical officer on the telephone, a log officer, radio officer, set up a perimeter and... uh, oh, yes. Certainly, Mr. Heller. Only what pertains to the Bernsteins.
Understood.
Later I hear from Communications that the description they have is of a small male Latino in his mid-twenties with bushy hair, light build, blue jacket and jeans and tennis shoes. Do I have anything to add, I’m asked.
I say, ‘That isn’t the description I put out.’
The dispatcher wants to know where I came up with these suspects and I say from two reliable witnesses, an older man and his wife. That we have their name and addresses. A detective from juvie has a sheet of paper I gave him, with the name and address and phone of those witnesses.
Disregard that, I’m told. ‘The people that were right next to Kennedy say it was one man,’ the dispatcher tells me. ‘Your two witnesses might just have been getting out of the way so they wouldn’t get shot. You don’t want to get any talk started about some big conspiracy.’
Detective Inspector John Powers comes by and wants to know who was responsible for putting these descriptions of two suspects on the air. I say I was and brief him on my encounter with the Bernsteins.
‘Cancel that description,’ Powers says. ‘We don’t want to make a federal case out of this. We’ve got the suspect in custody.’
Yes, Mr. Heller, that’s exactly what he said — we don’t want to make a federal case out of it. You didn’t generally challenge Powers, by the way. He’s famous for carrying three or four guns.
I agree to cancel the APB on the male suspect, but insist we maintain the one on the girl in the polka-dot dress, who if nothing else might be a key witness. Powers doesn’t like it but has no choice. It was either that or relieve me of my post and he needed me there at that moment. But he had the last laugh, anyway. I later learned he contacted Communications directly and ordered the polka-dot APB yanked.
Anyway, I wound up manning that Command Post in that parking lot for twenty-three hours.
I asked Sgt. Shore, “Did you testify about any of this at the Sirhan trial?”
Midday, the park’s greens and browns and tans lolled in sunlight, and the hippies and tourists had been invaded by retiree couples, perhaps including the Bernsteins. Who knew? Not the LAPD.
“No,” the officer said. “Wasn’t questioned about it, either. Not by the prosecution or the defense. But I was instructed by my watch commander, last September, to prepare a follow-up report for SUS.”
“For who?”
He smiled a little, a traffic cop amused by someone trying to talk their way out of a ticket. “Not ‘who,’ Mr. Heller — ‘what.’ Special Unit Senator. Surprised you haven’t heard of that.”
“I’m playing catch up,” I admitted.
He slipped on sunglasses; I’d already put mine on.
“SUS is the ‘elite’ task force,” Shore said, “that investigated the assassination. I delivered a copy personally to their HQ. And I let them know I was available for an interview any time, at their convenience. No one ever called.”
“What became of the report?”
His grin was sudden and wide and had no humor in it. “Funny you should ask. I filed copies in my personal box at the station and at the watch commander’s desk and the Records section, too. A few days later a couple of things occurred to me that I’d neglected to put in, and I went back to pick up those copies and amend them. The one in my box was gone. I asked around and nobody knew anything. At SUS they claimed not to know what the hell I was talking about. But the Day Watch sergeant at Rampart said two plainclothes dicks from SUS came around and collected all the reports, including my initial one.”