What are Peter Ueberroth’s Connections
to the RFK assassination?

In 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy was murdered right after giving his California presidential primary victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Orange County’s Richard Nixon would become president instead of the surging Kennedy.

Daryl Gates, an Orange County resident and chief of the LAPD, was in charge of security. He removed all police from the scene claiming someone told him that Kennedy did not want LAPD there. Gates would work closely with Ueberroth in staging the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Rafer Johnson, one of Kennedy’s bodyguards, hung back, allowing Sirhan to charge Kennedy. Johnson was the first to get the murder weapon, though it somehow got back into Sirhan’s hands. Strangely, Johnson refused to hand over the weapon until he got to police headquarters, keeping it in his pocket until hours later. Rafer Johnson would go on to work with Peter Ueberroth at Ambassador’s International, kind of ironic, seeing the trauma he must have endured when his idol was shot down at the Ambassador Hotel. Ueberroth would later pick Johnson to light the Olympic torch at the L.A. Coliseum.

The armed security consisted of Thane Eugene Cesar. Cesar once said, “I definitely wouldn’t have voted for Bobby Kennedy. His brother John sold the U.S. down the river. He literally gave it to the Commies, the minorities, the blacks.” Cesar was an associate of Robert Maheu, Howard Hughes’ personal attorney and the former president of the Irvine Company. Peter Ueberroth was also president of Donald Bren’s Irvine Company.

The first person to testify at S.S.’s trial was Paul Ziffren. Ziffren was the man instrumental in picking Ueberroth to head the Los Angeles Olympics.
The trial of S.S. was really just a big USC trial. The lawyers, the judge, the criminalist, the psychiatrists were all out of USC. Peter Ueberroth is a life trustee of USC.

Many in Southern California have wondered how Ueberroth, the owner of a small travel agency, rose to so much prominence in such a short time, and it’s interesting to note his connections to such a pivotal event in SoCal history.

Aaron Dahl

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