Despite my ardent efforts, I was not able to uncover or otherwise learn anything about Ward Wood, Lawford’s next door neighbor; but within the text of David Marshall’s book, The DD Group: An Online Investigation Into the Death of Marilyn Monroe, Wood’s testimony received a considerable amount of scrutiny. A few of Marshall’s co-investigators accepted the ex-automo­bile executive as a credible witness while a few dismissed his testimony, primarily because he was essentially a blank, an unknown commodity.

Wood’s mystery and obscurity notwithstanding, assessing the testimony that he related to Anthony Summers is a simple matter, primarily because the alleged neighbor’s testimony is simple: he observed Robert Kennedy at Peter Lawford’s beach house on August the 4th in 1962. I can easily accept that Ward Wood was Lawford’s next door neighbor, even though Summers never offered any actual evidence or proof that Wood lived next door to Lawford at that time; and I can easily accept that Wood observed Robert Kennedy as described; but the rub, the navel of the issue is this: I cannot disregard the testimony of John Bates et al. and therefore I cannot accept that Wood observed Robert Kennedy on August the 4th in 1962.

Ward apparently was the only Lawford neighbor who saw Robert Kennedy that day. At least Anthony Summers did not uncover any additional witnesses; and it is certainly reasonable to assume that Summers tried to corroborate Wood’s testimony: he simply could not. Additionally, I would be remiss if I did not point out the following: Wood did not say anything about the arrival or the departure of a helicopter from Santa Monica Beach on August the 4th or the 5th.

Conspiracists never mention nor appear to recognize that Robert Kennedy frequently visited the sunny environs of Southern California. Not only was he attempting to arrange a production deal to film his book, The Enemy Within, but his sister, Patricia, was married to Peter Lawford; and Patricia lived at 625 Palisades Beach Road, Santa Monica, California. Just as an aside, Patricia Kennedy Lawford was John Kennedy’s sister, too. Several FBI files memorialize Robert Kennedy’s many and frequent trips to Los Angeles and visits with his sister and brother-in-law.

Anthony Summers noted that Peter Lawford, by his own admission, was obsessed with using the newest form of civilian air transportation, the whirlybird; and Peter employed any pretext to generate a ride in the soap bubble of a helicopter. Landing and departing from Santa Monica Beach was normally illegal, but doing so had been approved during the Kennedy administration. It is entirely possible that helicopters picked-up Robert or John Kennedy, or even both simultaneously, at various airports in an around Los Angeles and delivered them to Santa Monica Beach on a variety of dates.

Of course, a trip to Los Angeles by the middle Kennedy brothers could never have been simply that, simply a trip to Los Angeles or simply a trip to Los Angeles to visit their sister and brother-in-law. All too often, each and every visit John or Robert Kennedy made to Los Angeles during the latter half of 1961 and the first half of 1962 has assumed a sexual intent along with a nefarious and sinister overtone simply because of the ingrained belief that the middle Kennedy brothers undoubtedly traveled to Los Angeles only for sex with Marilyn Monroe and because of the other ingrained belief: both were involved in Marilyn’s death. Those ingrained beliefs were, and still are, unfounded and unproven.

Therefore, how unreasonable is it to assert that Ward Wood saw Robert Kennedy at the Lawford beach house on some other date when the attorney general visited his sister and his brother-in-law; and Wood merely confused the date with August the 4th. In my opinion, such an assertion is more than reasonable; and it is also more than reasonable to assert what follows. Wood testified to Summers nearly two decades after Marilyn’s death, after nearly twenty years of continual gossip, rumor and innuendo, after nearly twenty years of books, documentaries and movies promoting Marilyn’s involvement with the middle Kennedy brothers and their alleged involvement in her murder. Is it not possible that Ward Wood simply succumbed to the overwhelming power of a salacious media and conflated his observation of Robert Kennedy with the date of Marilyn’s death? Of course it is.