Gilroy California
An American Airlines flight from Chicago landed in San Francisco late Friday afternoon, August the 3rd in 1962. John and Nancy Bates waited patiently for their arriving weekend guests to deplane. Robert Kennedy, his wife, Ethel, and four of their older children, once inside the airport’s gate, greeted their weekend hosts. The Kennedy children included Kathleen, the eldest, eleven years old, along with Joseph II, ten years old, Robert, Jr., eight years old, and David, seven years old. After collecting the luggage, the four adults and four children piled into the Bates’ station wagon and headed to Gilroy, a town in the picturesque Santa Cruz Mountains, just north of Mount Madonna. The Kennedys visited with the Bates family at their ranch until Sunday morning; and by all accounts, confirmed with photographs taken by the Bates family, Robert Kennedy never left the Gilroy ranch that weekend.
Still, according to Rotson, Peter Lawford met Robert Kennedy at Los Angeles International Airport on August the 4th at 12:00 noon.
If Robert Kennedy arrived in Los Angeles at noon on August the 4th, he must have departed Gilroy between 9 and 9:30 AM; but Rotson does not offer any explanation regarding how Robert Kennedy was able to disappear from the Bates Ranch that early without his absence being noticed by everyone present. Certainly the Bates family, their additional guests and Roland Snyder, the ranch foreman, would have noticed that the attorney general was missing. Robert Kennedy’s wife and his four children most certainly would have noticed and questioned their father’s absence during that Saturday’s fun and family activities.
Still, according to Rotson, from the airport, the English actor drove the attorney general to the actor’s beachside mansion in Santa Monica. While there, RFK and Marilyn exchanged telephone calls. Between calls with Marilyn, Robert Kennedy telephoned President Kennedy providing updates on the situation. Robert Kennedy also made several, presumably guarded, telephone calls after requesting that Lawford leave the room (Rotson 154).
Why were the contents of the telephone conversations noted by Rotson left to our imaginations? Important conversations involving Marilyn and Robert Kennedy, John and Robert Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and persons unidentified―just left to our imaginations. Most certainly they were tape recorded by the telephone taps and recording equipment installed by the ultra-honest and trustworthy private detective, Fred Otash. Additionally, why did Rotson need to presume that Robert Kennedy’s private telephone calls were guarded. Again, most certainly, the entire encounter was recorded in real time, the activities inside Marilyn’s hacienda and the dialogue flying between Santa Monica, Brentwood and Hyannisport, President Kennedy’s location all day that Saturday. Why were the individuals who received those guarded telephone calls left unidentified? Very odd; at least it seems so to me.
From Santa Monica and the actor’s beachside mansion, according to Rotson, the brothers-in-law drove to Brentwood and Marilyn’s hacienda, where a rejected Marilyn angrily waited inside for a confrontation with her former lover. At 2:00 PM, Rotson asserted, Peter Lawford drove the attorney general into the entry court of 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in the actor’s black Lincoln Continental. According to Rotson, here’s what happened during that first visit.
The situation was already tense, and Marilyn was already livid. She was so livid she had set out a Spanish themed buffet for her soon to be former lover to enjoy; but Robert Kennedy ignored the food. He confronted Marilyn about her threats to hold a press conference and reveal her affair with both him and his brother. Even though Patricia Newcomb and Eunice Murray were present during the initial visit that Saturday, the scene quickly deteriorated into a profanity laced shouting match during which Marilyn grabbed a kitchen knife and went for Kennedy but Peter Lawford intervened, and it ended in a shame-faced scuffle (Rotson 23). In other words, Peter Lawford and Robert Kennedy wrestled Marilyn to the floor and forcefully disarmed her. After searching for Marilyn’s Little Red Diary briefly, Marilyn’s guests departed. Rotson does not explain or comment at all about the behavior of Pat Newcomb and Mrs. Murray while the two men assaulted Marilyn; and what happened to the Spanish buffet? We must presume, I presume, that the Spanish themed buffet simply disappeared.
The preceding scenario first appeared in C. David Heymann’s 1989 publication, A Woman Named Jackie. Allegedly, Heymann interviewed Peter Lawford, an alleged interview that will appear again later. Lawford purportedly provided Heymann with the knife wielding anecdote. The same scene also appeared in an abbreviated form in RFK: An Intimate Biography of Robert Kennedy, published in 1998. Heymann did not include Marilyn’s attempt to stab the attorney general in Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story, published in 2009; and in the biographer’s 2014 posthumous publication, Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love, Heymann reconfigured, transformed the knife into a harmless glass of bubbly. Strange to say the least; but Heymann explained the transformation as follows: Peter Lawford changed his story. Peter Lawford, who died on Christmas Eve in 1984, had been dead, with the arrival of 2014, for three long decades, thirty long years. When did Lawford change his story?
And yet, according to firsthand, eyewitness testimony from the Bates family, the Attorney General of the United States participated in many family oriented activities all day on August the 4th: a large breakfast, an early morning leisurely horseback trek to Mount Madonna, swimming, an early afternoon BBQ, more swimming, and a Kennedy favorite, touch football; and then that night, the Kennedys and the Bates enjoyed a private dinner, according to John Bates, Sr., at approximately 8:15 PM. The conversation during dinner, the senior Bates recalled and reported to biographer Donald Spoto, focused on the speech that the attorney general would deliver in San Francisco. After dinner, the adults retired for the night.
Sunday morning featured another large breakfast, after which the group attended Sunday Mass in Gilroy; and after returning to the ranch, John Bates, Sr. drove the Kennedys back to San Francisco where they visited with Paul Fay Senior. Robert Kennedy delivered his speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco on Monday, the 6th of August. Regarding the activities at the Bates ranch, the preceding is a recitation of undeniable facts.
Rotson simply ignored the first hand testimony offered by the Bates family and Roland Snyder. In fact, the names John and Nancy Bates, John Bates, Jr. and Roland Snyder do not appear at all in Bombshell. There is a glancing mention that Robert Kennedy and a portion of his family visited some friends in Gilroy that weekend.
In 2011, Susan Bernard published Marilyn: Intimate Exposures, a photographic expose and narrative about her famous father, Bruno, and his frequent collaboration with Marilyn Monroe. Even though Susan had discovered a letter that John Bates, Sr. wrote to her father in 1986 pertaining to several photographs snapped on August the 4th in 1962, she could not locate the photographs. That letter explained what each photograph depicted, and the general time of the day it was snapped. Fortunately John Bates, Jr. and his younger brother, Charles, found the photographs and provided them to Susan on a compact disc. At the end of her publication, Susan included ten (10) photographs, all of which had been taken on August the 4th in 1962, during the Kennedy family’s visit. Even though I included several of those photographs in Murder Orthodoxies, Section 7, dedicated to the myth of Robert Kennedy’s August the 4th helicopter flight from Gilroy to Los Angeles, I am going to include all ten (10) of the snapshots here, along with the accounting contained in the senior Bates’ letter to Bruno Bernard.
Using the 1986 letter that John Bates, Sr. wrote to Bruno Bernard, an explanation of each photograph follows hereafter.1Unless otherwise indicated, all the quotations in the following descriptions appeared in that letter.
Photograph 1: Obviously taken at the beginning of their leisurely horseback ride. John Bates, Sr. noted that the time of day was early in the morning. In the photograph are Robert Kennedy and Roland Snyder, taken while the horses were being saddled.
Photograph 2: Preparing to leave for Mt. Madonna, located to the south of the Bates Ranch. From the left, the persons in the photograph are: John Bates, Sr., Robert Kennedy holding his son, David, then Kathleen, the Kennedy’s eldest child, Ethel Kennedy and finally, Nancy Bates. Obviously then, Robert Kennedy participated in the horseback ride that morning.
Photograph 3: According to John Bates, Sr., the horseback ride ended at the site of the Miller home where we met Roland who had driven up with those who had not been riding horses. The ride took more than three hours of the morning. After the group returned to the ranch, they all swam and then participated in a BBQ and an early afternoon lunch by the pool. The senior Bates did not comment on how the group returned to the ranch or the amount of time consumed by their return.
Photographs 4 and 5: Swimming after horseback riding and waiting at poolside for lunch to be served. In photograph 5 are Robert, Jr. and David with their father.
Photographs 6, 7 and 8: After swimming and lunch, Robert Kennedy urged the group into a game of touch football. Due to the generally hilly terrain surrounding the ranch, the only flat location suitable for a football contest was at the top of the ranch, a two-mile hike, mostly uphill. A hike of two miles up-hill would have consumed approximately an hour, possibly more, depending on several unknown factors. Photograph 6 depicts the soon to be touch football teams resting near the end of their two-mile uphill hike. Photograph 7 depicts Robert Kennedy posing at the site chosen for the football game; and photograph 8 depicts the game in progress, snapped by John Bates, Sr. The amount of time consumed by the football game was not stipulated.
Photograph 9: After the touch football game, the group returned to the ranch for some more swimming and then dinner; but when the children came dressed to dinner, Bob threw them all into the swimming pool, the senior Bates informed Bruno Bernard, certainly a cantankerous and summer camp-like shenanigan. Obviously, the wet ones had to return to their rooms, dry off and redress for dinner. The children ate dinner first, and then the adults convened for a quiet meal, at approximately 8:15 PM. Needless to say, the senior Bates wrote to Bruno Bernard, all of us were tired and retired to our rooms for the night.
Photograph 10: Taken by the senior Bates on Sunday morning, August the 5th, as he prepared to drive the Kennedy family back to San Francisco and to the apartment of Paul Fay, Sr.
For his 1993 Marilyn biography, Donald Spoto interviewed the Bates family. All those interviewed told virtually the same story presented above with the following exceptions: John Bates Sr. recalled: Dinner lasted until about 10:30 PM and we were in our bedrooms not long after that. John Bates, Jr. recalled that he was fourteen at the time and was about to go off to boarding school. I remember Bob teasing me about it, saying, “Oh, John, you’ll hate It.” The senior Bates told Spoto: I remember Bobby sitting with the children as they ate and telling them stories. He truly loved his children. Every person interviewed by Spoto asserted that Robert Kennedy never left the Bates ranch that Saturday; and Roland Snyder declared emphatically: By God, he wasn’t anywhere near LA! He was here with us! (Spoto 560-563, all quotations).
Nothing additional needs to be presented, actually; but I will present the following comments.
It is worth noting here that FBI files 77-51387-293/300 memorialized the Kennedy’s visit with the Bates family: On August three last, Attorney general and his wife and four children arrived in San Francisco. They were met by personal friends, Mr. and Mrs. John Bates, who took them to their ranch at Gilroy, California, for the weekend. On the Evening of August 5 last, AG and family returned to San Francisco and spent night at apartment of Paul Fay, Sr. (FBI file 77-51387-293). According to FBI file 77-51387-300:
This memorandum is submitted to supplement teletypes sent from San Francisco and Seattle with relation to the Attorney General’s visit to these cities earlier this month. This was a combination business and vacation trip on the part of the Attorney General.
He arranged his flight from Washington Friday afternoon, August 3, 1962, so he could transfer in Chicago to the American Airlines flight from Boston to San Francisco which was being used by his wife and four older children. On arrival in San Francisco, the Attorney General and his family were met by their weekend hosts, Mr. and Mrs. John Bates. Bates is a San Francisco attorney in a prominent law firm headed by John Sutro, President of the San Francisco Bar Association. The Attorney General and his family spent the weekend at the Bates ranch located about sixty miles south of San Francisco. This was strictly a personal affair.
The Bates family’s photographs clearly prove where Robert Kennedy was all day on August the 4th in 1962. When, according to Rotson, Robert Kennedy was flying, either by airplane or helicopter, it matters not which type of aircraft, the attorney general was actually riding an equine mount slowly toward Mount Madonna; when, according to Rotson, the attorney general was in Brentwood slapping Marilyn Monroe around her hacienda and searching for her damned Little Red Diary, he was actually in Gilroy, either swimming, eating lunch or hiking uphill to participate in a touch football game; when, according to Rotson, the attorney general was in Marilyn’s kitchen preparing a poisonous drink for his rejected lover alongside Peter Lawford, Robert Kennedy was actually already in bed following a quiet and peaceful dinner with his wife, Ethel, John Bates, Sr., a renowned San Franciscan attorney, and his wife, Nancy. According to my research, both John and Nancy Bates possessed impeccable characters and reputations. They were not inclined to lie or possessed by deceitful predilections.
In short and directly stated, Robert Kennedy was three hundred and eleven miles north of Los Angeles on August the 4th in 1962; he was not in Brentwood or Marilyn’s hacienda.
Rotson did not present any actual evidence contradicting the testimony of the Bates contingent. They offered a quotation from Daryl Gates’ biography which declared that the LAPD always knew when the attorney general was in Los Angeles, a declaration that amounts to absolutely nothing, provides absolutely no evidence pertaining to Robert Kennedy’s location on August the 4th. At least Anthony Summers, in later editions of Goddess, confronted the Bates’ issue and attempted to prove, with various second and third hand testimony from various policeman through their informants, that Robert Kennedy was in Los Angeles the day Marilyn died. Not even Anthony Summers could find one first hand eyewitness sighting by a police officer. Furthermore, all the testimony offered by Marilyn’s Irish pathographer was afflicted with the common ailments of contradiction and speculation.
As I have already noted, Bombshell simply ignored the Bates family and their firsthand testimony. As for the statement by Daryl Gates, it is revealing that Rotson offered the testimony of a man who was the leader of a police force that can certainly be called Gestapo-like, a man who, even Rotson admits, was continually deceitful and dishonest and engaged in the most egregious form of evidence manipulation simply because he could do so with impunity. Honestly, if I must choose whom to believe, I neither believe Daryl Gates nor his rotten COPS.
