The Mystery Persists in R.F.K. Killing

Do we really know all we should about how Robert F. Kennedy was killed 19 years ago at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles? Can we really be sure Sirhan Sirhan acted alone when 95% of the evidence (an estimated 50,000 documents including interviews with 75 eyewitnesses and 2,500 photographs) remains locked up in governmental files?

Investigative reporter Dan E. Moldea doesn’t prove that someone else shot Kennedy in his highly provocative piece in Regardie’s, an ad-fat business magazine in Washington with a hard edge and sharp wit. But he makes a convincing case that the official story is rife with crucial inconsistencies and unanswered questions and remains an unsolved mystery.

Moldea marshals a great deal of evidence to support claims that the LAPD botched its original investigation, misrepresented key facts and destroyed material evidence. (Cmdr. William Booth of the LAPD, who had not seen Moldea’s piece, said that all the material that can be released has been released and that “everyone has access to the same evidence and they can come up with their own theories.” The LAPD’s position, he said, is summed up by the facts that Sirhan Sirhan was tried and convicted and is still in prison.)

Moldea includes a batch of police investigation photos and diagrams that seek to reconstruct the chaotic events that left Kennedy dead and five others wounded after Sirhan emptied his eight-shot .22-caliber handgun into the crowded hotel pantry.

The explanation of how Sirhan’s eight bullets ended up where they did contradicts eyewitness accounts, medical records and logic, Moldea contends. An FBI photo showing a pair of bullet holes in the wall is offered as evidence that there were additional bullets that police theories don’t account for.

Further, though no eyewitnesses say Sirhan’s gun ever got closer than 18 inches from Kennedy, the fatal bullet that entered behind Kennedy’s head was fired from “between one inch to one and a half inches from” the edge of Kennedy’s ear, according to L.A. County Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi’s testimony at Sirhan’s trial.

Moldea’s piece ends with a plot straight from a B movie. He tracks down and interviews a former armed security guard who was at R.F.K.’s side that night. Some suspect (based on circumstantial evidence) that he was “The Second Gun” who could have pumped four shots into Kennedy while the wildly shooting Sirhan was being restrained. After Moldea, the ex- guard and his lawyer reenact the events of Kennedy’s murder, Moldea asks the man point-blank if he killed Kennedy deliberately or accidentally. The man answers “No,” but as Moldea concludes, until all of the unscrutinized LAPD evidence is released, many “monumental questions about the case remain.”

The Price Is Rice

The subject of the sale of Lynn Armandt’s memories and photographs of her social life with Gary Hart and Donna Rice continues to attract attention. Sources have said People magazine paid Armandt a figure ranging from $125,000 to $200,000 for its recent cover story on Rice and Hart, but People spokesperson Elizabeth Wagner in New York would not comment on the figure. Armandt’s Miami attorney, Amy Karan, was unavailable for comment.

Affordable Fashion

You may have to be young in spirit (if not age) to dig In Fashion’s attitude. But at least you don’t have to be as rich as Madonna to afford the stylish threadery it hawks on nearly every page.

The lively and boldly put together bimonthly fashion and life-style magazine is aimed at both men and women in their early 20s (the pre-Elle and GQ crowd).

Denim and cotton are the fabrics of choice and In Fashion’s look is sort of a prepped up Beastie Boys-meets-Melrose Avenue-meets-the Bangles. There are expensive items--a $195 navy wool blazer or a fur coat (for just $279 by Gerda Fashion). But most are 100% hanging-out casual and fall in the affordable $30 to $80 range.

In Fashion’s signature gimmick is to run two celebrities on its cover. July/August’s will sport Tina Turner and David Bowie, both of whom are briefly interviewed. In a laudable show of social consciousness (and no doubt as a clever way to land big names for its covers), the 500,000-plus-circulation magazine has begun donating $10,000--plus 20% of new subscription revenues and 20% of certain alcohol and tobacco ad revenues--to charities on behalf of its cover folk. (Bowie’s gift is headed to Alive With Feeling, a homeless theater group based in L.A., while Turner’s is being given to Vietnam Veterans of America.)

The bulk of In Fashion’s easy-going editorial matter is found in the Face to Face department. It runs a string of short, sweet profiles of hot, young Hollywood stars-to-be, like “Footloose’s” Kevin Bacon and actress Meg Ryan, and MTV types like rocker Robbie Nevil. There’s also an interesting feature on the “Strip Men,” the hippest new comic book creators, including Gary Panter, who’s also the design director of Pee-wee Herman’s “Playhouse.” Best of all, In Fashion carries no perfume inserts.

Bits and Pieces

By auto-industry standards, NUMMI--the joint experiment in car making by General Motors and Toyota at the once-closed GM plant in Fremont--is a success. But there are human problems.

According to Daniel Forbes’ report in Business Month (formerly Dun’s Business Month), United Auto Workers members man the assembly lines but Toyota managers run the show. In pursuit of high quality, high productivity and worker loyalty, NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing Inc.) employs all those famous Japanese management techniques--decision-making production teams, group calisthenics, worker-boss egalitarianism, etc.

Thanks to compromises between management and a union that was willing to relax its work rules in exchange for strong pledges of job security, Chevrolet Novas made at Fremont cost about $1,000 less than comparable U.S. models. NUMMI turns out 60 cars an hour (the U.S. average), yet uses only one-third the average manpower. (By comparison, Japanese assembly lines--where the average age is 30 compared to NUMMI’s 40--turn out 125 cars an hour).

But as Forbes found when he visited the plant, after two years workers (average pay: $13 a hour) are no longer so gassed-up about Japanese ways, and they are doing some serious grumbling. There are complaints about the strict attendance policy (under GM, absenteeism was 20%; under no-nonsense NUMMI, it’s 2.5%) and the quickening pace of the assembly line. Union dissidents are grumbling that their local has become a “company union,” and with increased foreign competition and Nova sales sluggish they are worrying about layoffs. Despite these developments, however, says Forbes, NUMMI’s overall success has persuaded Toyota to invest in a high-tech, $800-million plant in Kentucky and GM is applying lessons learned at NUMMI to its other facilities.

Time magazine seems a little overly pessimistic about a fairly recent, apparently unstoppable and totally unplanned demographic trend that’s been dotting America with sprawling “megacounties.” Two of these economically booming half-city, half-suburbs are Orange County and Fairfax County, Va., near Washington. The problems: increasing congestion, labor shortages, governmental and infrastructural inadequacies and virtually 100% white populations. Two facts demonstrate how quickly things can change without much notice: In 1975 construction of suburban office space passed that of central cities (it’s 60% suburban to 40% city) and as early as 1980 almost twice as many workers were commuting from suburb to suburb (27 million) as were taking trips to a central city (14 million). . . . New York magazine’s media writer Edwin Diamond inspected New Yorker magazine to see what, if any, changes the editorship of Robert Gottlieb has wrought in the five months since he replaced longtime editor William Shawn. Except for some fine tunings and tinkerings invisible to the average reader, the magazine Shawn created is still pretty much intact, Diamond says. One quantification of Gottlieb’s reign: The cartoon count for the May and April issues has been running about 23 an issue, versus 19 an issue for the same period last year. . . . Redbook’s full of sensible advice: Dr. Benjamin Spock warns that overprotected children never learn to think or do for themselves. Meanwhile, Clarkson N. Potter, in an excerpt from her new book “Women Men Leave: Why Men Are Drawn to Women, What Makes Them Want to Stay,” warns wives that if they are too critical or too demanding their husbands may give up and stop trying to please them. . . .