I Wear My Sunglasses At Night
[Original versions posted on my blog on November 2, 9 and 12, 2013 as "I Wear My Sunglasses At Night" (Parts I, II and III)]1.
Back in the old days of the internets, before all these Kindles and HiFi's and HD-plasma screems, there used to be something called "a dial-up connection." That was a means to go online by connecting through what was called "a telephone line." (A "telephone" was what people back then used to communicate when they couldn't visit one another and speak face-to-face -- an ancient precursor to the mobile- or cell-phone). One drawback of this "dial-up connection" was waiting a long time to watch videos. Typically, it would load (and the video would advance) for about three seconds; then it would freeze-frame and "buffer" for 3-4 minutes. Then a little more video would move up, then more buffering; and so on and so on. It was a long process that usually more or less ruled out trying to watch videos online.
One night many years ago, I spent hours and hours waiting for some videos to load; I was researching the murder of Robert F. Kennedy and wanted to see if a couple of videos on "The Youtube" had anything of interest in them. The first one was a kind of career retrospective, mostly of still photographs. I gave up on it after a while due to the time it was taking to load. The second (eventually) proved to be a brief clip of Kennedy leaving the stage right after he gave his speech in winning the Democratic presidential primary in California. As I sat waiting for the video to load, and so had a lot of time to view countless freeze-frames, I noticed that an unusual-looking fellow began to appear in the scene.
He was a young man with blond hair who seemed of above-average height, wearing a white turtleneck under a blue suit-jacket. And for some reason, he had on sunglasses ................ inside a building, at around midnight. A cool look, no doubt, but he also stood out because all the other figures bounced around as he seemed to stand rigidly stock-still (directly in the path that Kennedy initially moved toward). And to the guy's immediate right stood a woman with black hair pulled back tight (as in a "bun") whose demeanor was not quite giddy with joy. I found this so fascinating that I later re-loaded the video and took snapshots of the freeze-frames, eventually creating animation videos from these. In the original version of this writing in 2013, I found that the animations wouldn't load to my blog. They do seem to load here, so instead of 62 single screenshots, we have the following animations made from them.
(Click on images or open in new tab or window to view full-size)
(Slowed down version)
The young man and woman may have first stood out as a side-effect of the video's loading and buffering. They came into sight gradually in the scene due to the slowed-down and freeze-framed process. That likely helped to induce a more dramatic sense of things, but their distinctive body language and demeanor compared with others on stage truly set them apart. I also recalled recently reading (in something by Phil Melanson?) a witness statement that mentioned a man on the scene who had a "surfer-cut" hairstyle, whether blond or not, and in what context I couldn't recall. So I wrote down some points to consider.
1. the filmed sequence only lasts about a dozen seconds or so
2. the young man is fairly tall compared to everyone else except for the really tall older man across from him who seems to be some sort of coordinator of the proceedings (going up and down the stairs to the right, alongside a man briefly conferring with RFK, etc)
3. his wearing sunglasses (old-style) inside a building at around midnight stands out, though possibly due to brightness of lighting, eye sensitivity, etc, or even "a California thing" (Rosey Grier also may be wearing sunglasses, harder to tell)
4. body language: in regular-speed action, everyone around him seems to mill about, "bobbing back and forth" (shoulders and upper torso moving right, then left, then right, etc) while he maintains a consistent rigid posture (stock-still, straight up-and-down); his attention seems intently focused on RFK throughout
5. (later thoughts after working with and viewing pics)
a. RFK moves to the right from podium; when young man comes into view, RFK quickly turns to his right (turns his back to him) as the woman looks away (to her right) and young man looks down very briefly; he then looks back up maintaining same intent focus on RFK
b. the young man's consistent posture is a 3/4 stance with right side towards RFK
c. the expressions and body language of the dark-haired woman may be revealing: she is not smiling at any point; when RFK turns his back on her and the young man, she looks away (and downward) to her right, starts to look back toward RFK but appears to have her eyes closed and doesn't bring her face all the way back up, then suddenly drops her head straight down
d. Kennedy might have ordinarily gone down the steps at his right and into the crowd to make his exit from the Embassy Room. I took at face-value the idea (as in the Kranz report) that Fred Dutton had decided they should go off the back of the podium stage and into the pantry; this seemed to make sense due to the lateness of the hour and the need to get RFK's comments out for morning news reports in the East. But a contemporary report from Time magazine had interesting information (despite, naturally, now requiring you to subscribe to read it in full):
The next stop was to be the press room. For once, Kennedy did not plunge through the crush to reach the Embassy Room's main door. Bill Barry, his bodyguard, wanted to go that way despite the crowd; he did not like the idea of using a back passageway. Said R.F.K.: 'It's all right.' So they went directly behind the speaker's platform through a gold curtain toward a serving kitchen (see diagram) that led to the press room. The Senator walked amid a clutch of aides, hotel employees and newsmen, with Ethel a few yards behind. This route took him through a swinging door and into the hot, malodorous, corridorlike chamber that was to be his place of execution. [my emphasis in bold-dwd]This sounds like Kennedy had a customary route, walking off the stage down the steps at the right. In the animations above, there are two men initially leading that way -- the very tall man previously mentioned and the man with whom RFK briefly confers. Both seem in position to clear the way ahead of the Senator; after he confers with the one to his immediate left, they both then follow directly behind as the entire group heads to the back of the platform. In looking again at the slowed-down animation (while writing this posting), I noticed that right after RFK initially turns away from the direction of the stairs, directly in front of him a man then raises his right arm with his index finger extended, possibly gesturing in the direction of the stairs, to remind Kennedy which way he's supposed to go? The man then turns away, now in position to lead (immediately in front of RFK) going the opposite way. My guess is that's Bill Barry. Highly speculative, of course, but this could indicate that Kennedy had concerns about the focused young man with sunglasses, did an immediate about-face and then shortly made his way back out the same way he came in. (Bill Barry's instinct was right, though: the crowd itself out in the open would have been "more secure" because any potential attack would've been in full view of everyone and probably caught entirely on film.)
(Time, June 14, 1968)
2.
In my original study of screenshots and animations I made from the clip I'd stumbled upon, I isolated three people close together on the stage: the blond young man in sunglasses; the uncomfortable-looking young woman next to him; and a shorter, stocky man with dark hair and mustache directly behind her. (The top of Ethel Kennedy's head is in the bottom foreground of the first three images below.)
A project for someone with the inclination and means to do so would be to try to identify everyone who was on the platform during Kennedy's speech. According to Dan Moldea, this would have been about 20 people (The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy, 1995, p. 25). In my own attempts many years ago, I started making the more likely ones.
In other attempts at investigation, I found this in William Klaber and Phil Melanson's Shadow Play, p. 127 (though the person in question, presumably, is most likely to be Sirhan in a denim jacket):
On July 9, 1968, Nina Rhodes had been interviewed by an agent from the FBI. Her interview summary states:
At approximately 8:30 pm on June 4, 1968 [Nina Rhodes] went to the Ambassador Hotel with her husband Michael Rhodes.... [S]he followed the election results with Pierre Salinger, Frank Mankiewicz and various other Kennedy staff members.... [Moving forward to the shooting itself-dwd] She had just left the entrance to the kitchen and noticed the Senator shaking hands with various kitchen employees...when she suddenly heard a sound like a firecracker.... She instantaneously realized that...shots were being fired..... [T]he individual who fired the shots at the Senator appeared to her to be wearing a powder blue jacket and he seemed to be framed against the walls which were also powder blue. When she saw him he seemed to be turned from her so that she saw part of his back and left side as he was in what she described as a semi-crouch position.
At that time from Shadow Play, I had also made another note: "Lisa Urso noticed a blond haired man in a grey suit putting a gun into a holster. A second, unnamed, witness saw a tall, dark-haired man, wearing a black suit, fire two shots and run out of the pantry." Later, I even began a search for possible hitmen who might fit the age for the young blond man but turned up little of consequence.
More recently, I found an FBI Complaint Form (FD-71) in a source no longer available on the internets that reported a telephone call received "7-19-1968" at 3:52 PM, made by a man with identity redacted (referred to as "C").
C said he had called the LAPD several weeks ago to report the following, however, he guessed they did nothing about it. He said he formerly lived at [DELETED] which is near the Ambassador Hotel. He said on the night of the KENNEDY shooting he had been at his apartment. He said hearing some commotion he went outside about 12:25 pm [sic -- A.M.] that xxx night and observed a blonde headed fellow running between Sixth and Wilshire. He entered a red MG or Triumph and sped away up Alexandria Street. He said this man was young and looked to be about 6 [feet] tall. He said almost simultaneously another shorter, (5' 6-7") dark haired man also came running up Alexandria and entered the apartment building located at 526 S. Alexandria.
C said he realizes the above incident might be coincidental; however it was a published fact that SIRHANS car was found on Alexandria. Further the time is relative (12-25pm) wherein it would be conceivable that these xxxxxxxx men might have been fleeing the shooting scene. In any event, he felt it should be reported.
C was advised his call would be made a matter of record.
Finally, I had also later found another brief video clip of the crowd at the speech. Below is an animation I made from separate screenshots. The blond young man in sunglasses begins to appear at our upper left. (Below that are composites from three original, very light screenshots -- for identification and orientation.)
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